This week I am studying Revelation 7 in preparation for the talk on Wednesday night. To say that it is a difficult passage is an understatement.
Most people tend to focus on the 144,000. Other than that number being picked up upon by some cults of Christianity though… There isn’t really much interest in this. To me, it is simple. God will seal those 144,000 descendents of the 12 tribes of Israel in fulfillment of His promise to Abraham. I don’t think there is much room to wiggle on that. Whether it will be exactly 144,000 or just a symbolic number… I don’t know because the bible is so unclear. But I know this for sure. God keeps His promises.
To me, the hard part of the passage is the second half. It screams out… “Who are these people?” While John makes it abundantly clear that these people are saved from among the tribulation, it isn’t clear if they were saved during the tribulation or not. For a pre-trib person like me this implies that these are new believers that were martyrdom during the tribulational period. (Since all believers were ruptured before the tribulation began.) In fact, this is a place where the post-trib view shines.
Application-wise. I’m still studying. Perhaps I will go with “in times of trouble, will you step up?” or something like that.
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