Revelation 7 - Introduction

Revelation 7. This chapter seems to be an interlude in the movement of the drama. It is not easy to see how it fits on to the previous narrative. Some scholars have regarded it as an interpolation. Others have imagined that the writer of the Apocalypse had no sense of unity, and threw the various visions together in a haphazard fashion without any principle of arrangement. The true explanation, however, seems to be as follows: Six seals have already been broken. The seventh seal will bring the final doom. Before the day of the Lord breaks, the seal of God is placed upon Christians to protect them against the doom which is to fall upon the rest of the world. At the end of ch. 6 a picture is drawn of the panic and terror which fell upon all ranks of society as the great day approached. The question would naturally arise, How would Christians fare at the crisis? and this chapter gives them an assurance of safety.

The chapter contains two visions: (a) the sealing of the servants of God (Revelation 7:1), (b) the bliss of an innumerable multitude. Do these two visions refer to the same or to different people? The usual answer to this question is that the first vision relates to Jewish Christians who belong to the tribes of the children of Israel, the second to the great mass of Christians belonging to the Gentile world. But many modern scholars hold that this distinction cannot be maintained. In spite of the mention of the twelve tribes they think that the first vision includes all Christians who were alive at the time. Upon this theory the first vision describes the sealing which protects them from all the horrors that are to follow from the breaking of the seventh seal; the second vision portrays the final bliss of the redeemed in heaven after the tribulation is over (see Charles, Studies in the Apocalypse, pp. 133 ff.).