Survivors of the Wrath of God
Revelation 7:1-8
Let's open our Bibles then together tonight to Revelation chapter 7. And we have much in store for us as the Word of God is opened.
Coming to chapter 7, of course, is somewhat of a significant milestone in this book, it means that the foundational six seals are behind us, which lay out really the judgment of God over the period of time called the Tribulation which is yet to come. And seven is slid right in between the sixth and the seventh seal. If you look at chapter 8 verse 1, "When He broke the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour." So we're taking a bit of a respite here in the fury of the sixth seal before the seventh and final seal is broken.
After all of the furious devastating judgment of chapter 6, the first six seals, this chapter offers a moment of calm, a moment of promise, a moment of hope. It offers insight into escape. To borrow the words of an Old Testament prophet, "In the midst of wrath God remembers mercy."
Now as we have been learning, the future of our world will bring a time of unbelievable terror, a time of horror, a time of slaughter. It will come from the hand of the very one who made the world, the very one who entered the world as a baby, the very one who was crucified and rose again, even the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One who is unrolling the seven-sealed scroll. He is the one who is taking charge of His universe in this prophetic picture. He along with the one who sits on the throne, His Father, God Almighty, are effecting these powerful judgments on the earth.
As we went through the sixth seals we saw how the period of wrath to come is described in six different phases. First there is a false peace, then war, then famine, then pestilence and death, then vengeance, and then fear as the final day of the Lord comes crashing in in the sixth seal. I also told you that the sixth seal described in chapter 6 verses 12 to 17 is what triggers the day of the Lord. The sixth seal and the day of the Lord are really synonymous, as I understand Scripture, although what has come before is the work of God and the wrath of God, it is preliminary to the final great day of wrath as it's called in verse 17 which we could call the day of the Lord. And that's typically what God does. There are preliminary judgments that act as a warning, and then the final day of the Lord comes. We see that historically even as we see it here prophetically.
The world up to this time, that is up to the sixth seal, has not been willing to acknowledge God. Believers in the world, people have been converted and so there are believers in the world, and believers in the world have been giving testimony to the Word of God and telling people that this that is happening to them is the judgment of God. But they are not believed. Ultimately they are persecuted and killed, if possible, in an attempt to silence them.
Finally when the sixth seal hits, however, the world cannot escape that this is God. They know it. And in verse 16 they say, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come. And who is able to stand?"
When the culminating fury comes, they know it's God. It is then that most likely they will acknowledge that all that they have been experiencing has come from the hand of God as manifestation of His judgment. They are, as we noted last time, scared to death. I quoted you out of Luke where the Bible tells us that they will faint for fear, and the word "faint" means to die. Some of them during this time of the sixth seal will be scared to death. The ones that don't die out of fear are going to want to be dead and they're going to cry for the rocks to crush their life out, rather than have to face God and Christ alive...thinking perhaps that way they'll escape.
What they say at the very end of verse 17 is very important for understanding the next chapter, because they ask the question, "Who is able to stand?" And that question is in part answered in chapter 7. In fact, we could safely say that chapter 7 is the answer to that question. "Who will survive the divine fury? Who will survive the anger and wrath of God? Who will survive the collapsing universe?" And the worst is yet to come. Trumpet judgments in chapters 8 and 9, bowl judgments, as they're called in chapter 16, and all of them seemed to be embraced within the horrors of the sixth seal. Who can survive it? When you look at the sixth seal and the seven trumpets and the seven bowl judgments and you add the cumulative effect together, the question is a very good question...who can survive? And chapter 7 helps us answer that.
First of all, let me quickly say that the ungodly can't survive. They will not survive. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, we've gone back to that book numerous times in our study because they're so closely related. It says at the end of verse 3, "They shall not escape." And, of course, it's speaking of the unbelievers who will feel the fury of destruction from the hand of God. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, it says, "That when the Lord Jesus...verse 7...is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, He will deal out retribution to those who do not know God, to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction." There is nothing in that passage either that gives a glimmer of hope to any unbeliever that he or she might survive the wrath of God.
In chapter 2 of 2 Thessalonians, and verse 12, it says, "In order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness." The day of the Lord in terms of its effect on the ungodly seems to be absolutely comprehensive. So the ungodly will not survive. But there are some people who will survive the holocaust of God's wrath. They'll live through the sixth seal. They'll live through the trumpet judgments. They'll live through the bowl judgments. And they will actually go in to the millennial Kingdom alive. All of the judgment fury of God will miss them. All of the holocausts that are going on in the natural world around them will not touch them. They will also be protected from the murderous efforts of Antichrist and the rest of the world that aligns with him, to wipe out the Jews and the Christians. They'll survive it all...the wars, the famines, the earthquakes, the plagues, they'll survive it all, every bit of it. They will survive rampant sinfulness, running amuck on the earth as the restrainer, the Holy Spirit, let's go and sin runs its course. They'll survive the belching out of hell, of previously bound demons who will increase the demon force on the earth. They will survive the terror of Antichrist who rules the world and sets himself up as the only God to be worshiped. They will survive his blaspheming, his murderous intent. They will survive all of his enterprise, this man who has desecrated the temple, set himself up as God, committed an abomination there. They'll survive it all. And they'll go right on in to the Kingdom.
Who are these people that will survive? Well let's meet one group of them, chapter 7 verse 1. "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 should blow on the earth or on the sea or 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 bondservants of our God on their foreheads.' And I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144 thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel. From the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed; from the tribe of Reuben..." and then it goes on...Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.
Now this is a fascinating section and a fascinating group. It is obviously the logical answer to the question at the end of chapter 6, as I said. "In the midst of judgment there is to be mercy." As I read that I was reminded of that wonderful and hopeful and encouraging text in the last book of the Old Testament, namely the book of Malachi. It too talks about the day of the Lord. In chapter 3 and verse 16, "Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another and the Lord gave attention and heard it and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name."
What were they talking about? Well they were speaking to each other cause they were hearing the prophecy about the day of the Lord and they were saying to each other, "I wonder what will happen to us," and the prophet says, "The Lord knows about them and the Lord has a book and in that book are written the names of those who fear the Lord." And when the day of His fury hits, verse 17 says, "They will be Mine. On that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will prepare My own possession, I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him. So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him. For behold, the day...that's the day of the Lord...is coming, burning like a furnace and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff." That again is the universal destruction of the ungodly. "And the day is coming that will set them ablaze, says the Lord of host, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch, but for you who fear My name, the Son of righteousness will rise with healing in His beams and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall."
I think what he is saying as he looks at the end time of the day of the Lord is that God will protect the righteous. And they will enter in to His Kingdom. Whereas He will destroy all of the wicked.
Now we see a glimpse of that right here in this text that I just read to you. God knows who belongs to Him and God knows how if He chooses to protect them. In the destruction that He brought in the Flood, He knew how to protect the eight people that He wanted to protect. In the destruction that came in the city of Jericho, He knew how to protect the one woman He wanted to protect, Rahab. In the destruction that came to Sodom and Gomorrah, which was massive and wholesale, He knew how to protect the family He wanted to protect, that's the family of Lot. And when He set about to devastate, destroy and slaughter in the land of Egypt, He knew how to protect those He wanted to protect there as well. God knows who He wants to protect.
And the wrath will come and the wrath belongs to those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And when the full fury of that wrath hits, it's going to consume the ungodly but some of the godly will survive and one of the groups that will survive is here identified as these 144 thousand, twelve thousand out of each of the tribes of Israel.
Now let me just digress for a moment so that I can give you some broader picture here. We look at the period of the seven-year Tribulation as a time of judgment and indeed it is, as it unfolds in the seven seals, it is a time of judgment, as the trumpets and bowls will affirm. But it is also a time of redemption. And we need to remember that.
That same seven-year period is a time of salvation, a time of redemption. Yes, God will judge Satan and God will judge demons and God will judge sinners, but God will also redeem. We meet the redeemed out of this time period, don't we, back in chapter 6 where we see under the altar the souls of those who were slain because of the Word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained. And we meet those who were redeemed out of this period in chapter 7, starting in verse 9, a great multitude, nobody could even count them. They come out of every nation and tribe and people and tongue and they stand before the throne and before the Lamb and they're clothed in white robes and they have palm branches in their hands. And they are singing about salvation. And verse 14 says, "These are those who come out of the Great Tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Now would you notice a distinction there? The first group in chapter 6 is in heaven. They're under the altar in heaven. The second group appears to be standing on the earth. There will be people redeemed during that time period, some will die and go to heaven, some will live to enter the Kingdom. Many of the Gentile believers will die from the persecution. Some of them surely will die from the physical factors of earthquakes and famines and pestilences and the breakup of the universe and asteroid showers and meteorite showers and the chaos in the universe. But some of them will survive and go into the Kingdom. Even those who die will be immediately ushered into the presence of the Lord, won't they? True Christians may die in the persecution but that's not God's wrath. That's God's grace because when they die, they leave all the persecution to enter into the glory of the presence of the Lord. And certainly the suffering of this world, as Paul said in Romans 8, isn't worthy to be compared with the glory which belongs to those who know Him.
True Christians may die in the earthquakes, and die in the famines and the plagues and destructions that come in the seals and trumpets and bowls. That...that probably will happen. There's no reason to assume that it won't, but that's not God's wrath on them. The persecution isn't God's wrath on them, and neither is the judgment that falls in the world that may cause their death. That's simply another way for them to be ushered into God's presence also. So those believers among the Jews and those believers among the Gentiles who die in the persecution will enter into the presence of the Lord. And those who die in the terrible judgments of the world will really escape them.
But there will be many Gentiles and many Jews who will not die. They will survive to populate the Kingdom. We know that the Jews will be living on the earth in the Kingdom. That's clearly promised in the Scripture. It is also promised, as we shall see in the Scripture, that all the nations of the world during the Kingdom are going to be coming to Jerusalem and they're all going to be looking at the Christ, they're going to be hanging on the coattails of a Jew, every Jew says the Old Testament prophet will have had ten Gentiles hanging on his clothes, saying, "Lead me to the Messiah."
So there are going to be nations of the world in the Kingdom as well as the nation of Israel, which means that some of them have to survive into the Kingdom. The only ones that will survive will be believers. Jesus made this very clear in Matthew chapter 25 when He said, "In the separation process I separate between the sheep and the goats. The goats represent the ungodly who are cast into outer darkness. The sheep represent the Christians who go into the Kingdom. When the Kingdom is initiated, the thousand-year Kingdom, it is populated only by believers, believers of the nation Israel, believers of the nations of the world that God allows to survive the persecution and survive all of the holocausts of the world, and they become the populous that starts out the millennial Kingdom and they begin to reproduce and populate the world during that thousand-year reign of Christ.
Now among those who will survive is this very, very unique group. We do know that the Lord is going to save Israel during this time. The prophets call this time the time of Jacob's trouble, but it is also the time of Jacob's conversion. It is the time when Zechariah speaks very directly to the salvation of the nation Israel. Listen to what he says, chapter 12 verse 10, "I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn." They're going to see Christ for who He was. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo." And goes on to talk about the mourning.
Verse 1 of chapter 13, "In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity." There's going to be salvation. Down in verse 9 he says, "I'll bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, I will answer them, I will say they are My people and they will say the Lord is my God." That's the conversion of Israel.
Two out of three of them will be purged out. Ezekiel talks about the purging out of the rebels, chapter 20 and verse 38. One third will remain after the purging and that third will be the redeemed Israel who have looked upon the Messiah and seen Him for who He really is.
Chapter 14 of Zechariah says, "Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you. I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle. The city will be captured. The houses plundered. The women ravished. Half the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when He fights on a day of battle, and in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives which is in the front of Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle, from east to west by a very large valley so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south." The Lord's going to make a valley right through the very heart of the land of Israel, right from the Mediterranean Sea, moving right through the city of Jerusalem, He'll cut a huge valley. And into that valley will gather the nations and separate them, the sheep from the goats.
You will flee by the valley of My mountain, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel, yes, you will flee just like you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come and all the holy ones with Him."
Looking at the coming of Christ in the eyes of Zechariah he sees it as a time of Israel's conversion, and a time when all the nations are called together to be devastated by the coming Christ to be judged as to whether or not they enter His Kingdom. So there will be then at the end of this time period a protection of certain people from the nations and certain from Israel who have come to faith in Christ and they will go into the Kingdom. As I said, many of the believing people will be killed, but not all of them...not all of them.
This is the time of which Paul spoke when he said, "All Israel will be saved." God purges out the rebels, the rest see their Messiah, believe, are redeemed. And we don't know of that number how many, but obviously a large number will survive all of this and enter in to the Kingdom.
Now among these people who survive is this group in Revelation chapter 7. Let's go back and look at them. And I need to give you that context so you'd understand it. They're not the only survivors, but they're a very unique group and their survival is crucial to the rest of the survivors, and I'll show you why.
These folks have been saved earlier. I think it's important to note that. It isn't telling us that at the time the sixth seal hits 144 thousand people become converted. No. I think long before this they have become converted. Long before this they have looked on Him whom they have pierced and mourned for Him as an only son. Long before this they have understood the saving message of the gospel of Christ. Long before this they have heard the testimony of the Word and believed. They have been saved earlier than this, they have been preserved up till now and now as the final fury hits, they will be singled out for special service and special protection. They don't experience temporal wrath or eternal wrath. Other believers will experience the temporal judgment and not the eternal