Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)
Revelation 7 - Introduction
The seventh chapter of this book contains two visions, and it is of importance to determine the relation in which they stand to the general plan of the book, as well as to what immediately precedes and follows them. We may at once conclude that they are not a part either of the sixth or of the seventh seal. They have nothing in common with the former, while at the same time they are distinctly separated from it by the formula of Revelation 7:1, ‘After this.' The opening of the seventh seal, again, does not take place until we reach chap. Revelation 8:1. There can thus be no doubt that the whole seventh chapter is an episode, intended to sustain and comfort the Church before the judgments of the Trumpets, following immediately upon the seventh Seal, fall upon the world. It might have been feared that amidst these judgments even the Church would perish. But that cannot be. Under the Seals we found traces of the great truth that she shall be safe, yet only traces, distant intimations rather than clear revelations upon the point. Now we have more. In the prospect of the direr calamities soon to be unfolded the Church is to receive richer consolation. These sufferings of the righteous, it ought to be remembered, are wholly distinct in character from the judgments that are to fall upon the ‘earth.' They are the discipline of a Father's hand, the ‘cleansing' of His vine by the great Husbandman, the ‘tribulation' (Revelation 7:14) in which Christians have their part in the sufferings of Jesus.