Revelation In Overalls
Bible Prophecy Speaks To Century 21

Part III: "Revelation's Seven Broken Seals -- How To Stay In One Piece When Times Get Tough"

Sermon by Pastor Dale Wolcott

December 8, 2001

(Scriptures quoted are from New King James Version unless otherwise noted)

Acts 14:19-22: "Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, ‘We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.’"

Did you know that in wartime, scary movies are more popular than at other times? I’m told that sales, rentals, and attendance at horror movies and monster movies have been way up since the September 11 terrorist attacks. One would think people would be looking for comfort or reassurance or escape from fear, not an extra dose of it!

The psychologists who study this sort of thing call it "masking," and when I heard about it, it left me wondering about why Revelation is such a popular book today. Is the book of Revelation some sort of spiritual escape mechanism, a titillating diversion from the serious business of everyday Christian living in Century 21? Based on the popularity of the Left Behind books and others like them, I guess some people see it that way.

On the second Sabbath of each month this season, we are looking at the Book of Revelation in a much more serious way. Far from being a diversion from everyday living, we’re finding that Revelation is about everyday living in these end times. Revelation wears overalls!

In our first study, we saw in chapter 1 that Jesus, up in heaven at this very moment, has His work clothes on. He is on duty in the heavenly sanctuary. (We’re using these white overalls to represent Jesus’ priestly garments.)

Last month, in the last part of chapter 3, we found that Revelation speaks directly to the affluent church of our modern world. It challenges us to be, not a lukewarm reflection of the society around us, but a supercharged counterculture -- hot or cold -- plugged into Jesus and on fire for Him because we’re living in the judgment time (which is what the name "Laodicea" means).

Now this month we get to the scary part. We see that one of the main themes of Revelation is how to handle trouble. Revelation says, very honestly, that life is tough; and the closer we get to the end of the world, the tougher it’s going to get. "We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God."

But Revelation also provides tools for coping with tribulations, for staying in one piece when times get tough.

Chapter 4 is a spectacular word picture of the throne room in heaven, where the Creator of the Universe is worshiped, "24/7." At the beginning of chapter 5, John takes a closer look at the One seated on that rainbow-wrapped throne -- note verse 1. "And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals."

Coming down to chapter 6, John describes what he saw when those seven seals were broken open, one by one by one. The first eight verses (first four seals) list the famous "four horsemen of the Apocalypse:"

1^st (verse 2) = white

2^nd (verse 3 & 4) = fiery red -- war, bloodshed

3^rd (verse 5 & 6) = black -- famine

4^th (verse 8) "So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth."

"We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God." When you compare these first four seals with the first four churches of Revelation 2, and the first four trumpets in chapter 8, you see that the churches, seals and trumpets are roughly-parallel prophecies of the history of Christianity down through the centuries.

The four horses (from white to red to black to pale) with their riders describe the way Christianity fell from a pure gospel in the first century, down, down, down to a ghostly, deathly shadow of its former self in the medieval period. That’s when thirst for power, love of money and pagan superstition combined to mutate the official Christian church into a counterfeit religious system that actually persecuted faithful, Jesus-loving, Bible believers, and was responsible for millions of martyrdoms and war after war after war during that long period we sometimes call "the dark ages."

You can read about this in classic books like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and The Great Controversy by Ellen G. White. Another good source is Mervyn Maxwell’s God Cares: The Message of Revelation for You and Your Family." In fact, guests who attend six of the nine presentations in this series will be able to receive this book as a gift from the Midland SDA Church.

(Important note: It was not only the Roman church that persecuted and went to war in the name of God during those centuries. Some of the state-supported Protestant churches did many of the same things in the 1500’s, 1600’s, and 1700’s.)

You may remember that powerful Reformation hymn:

Faith of our fathers, living still, in spite of dungeon, fire and sword….
Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free;
How sweet would be their children’s fate, if they, like them, should die for thee.
Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death.

So finally, after all these centuries of tribulation, coming down almost to modern times, you come to the fifth seal in chapter 6, verses 9 and 10, "When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’"

The "altar" is the altar of sacrifice outside the heavenly sanctuary – in other words, on this earth. Like the blood of Abel that cried out from the ground (Genesis 4:10), the lifeblood of the martyrs cries out for justice: "O Lord, how long is this going to go on?"

The sixth seal provides an answer. Let’s read verses 12 through 14. Listen carefully, then I’m going to ask you a question.

Verses 12 & 13: "I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sack cloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind."

Verse 14: "Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place."

Here’s the question: Have these things happened yet?

Answer: Some have! Verse 14 certainly hasn’t been fulfilled yet. The skies haven’t parted; the mountains and islands are still in place. But beginning in the mid-1700’s many Bible students began to notice that history was fulfilling the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, and they began to talk about the Second Coming, or Second Advent, being near. Verses 12 & 13 saw remarkable fulfillments during that time period: the Lisbon Earthquake, 1755; the famous Dark Day, May 19, 1780; and probably the most spectacular meteor shower ever recorded, November 13, 1833. Records show there were an estimated 50,000 meteors per hour! (Did some of you get up at 5:00 a.m. on November 11 of this year to watch the meteor shower? The estimated rate this year was a mere 3,000-4,000 per hour.)

We are living halfway through the sixth seal!

But all this history is simply background for the main point this morning. The sealed scroll of Revelation 5-7 represents the title deed, the inheritance document for the lost human race. When the last seal breaks open, Jesus comes and the earth is made new; Eden is restored. Satan wants to keep this scroll closed forever.

Let’s go back to the beginning of chapter 5, noting verse 4: "So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it." And who steps forward to break the seals? Yes, Jesus. And so as Jesus goes about breaking open these seals one by one, what happens? Things get worse & worse! "We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God." Not because God wants it that way but because we’re in a war and Satan is angry.

Are you going through some tough times? Do you wonder sometimes how you’re going to stay in one piece? Very few of us know anything about the dungeon, fire and sword of the medieval martyrs. Nobody in this room has ever been chained in a prison dark for our faith. (You do have brothers and sisters in other parts of world who have — our mission team may meet some in Cuba next month.) But Satan is just as eager to persecute Christians in free America as anywhere else in the world.

Often things get worse when you purpose to follow Jesus. Many lose a job when they begin keeping the Sabbath. Family members may not understand why you do certain things differently than you used to. Illness may strike; even though the whole church is praying for you, you still hurt. You may feel like your life is like these old worn-out overalls; you’re not sure how much longer you can keep it together.

The story of Revelation’s seven broken seals holds a set of keys that can keep you together when everything is falling apart. I see three keys here – how to stay in one piece when times get tough.

The first key is in chapter 5. Note in verse 5 how the opening of the scroll is announced: "But one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals’ -- here comes a regal being, a powerful conqueror.

But when John looks for this Lion, what does he see?

Verse 6: "And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain." The slain Lamb, of course, is Jesus. Jesus has already been through your trouble!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn knew something about dungeon, fire and sword. He spent years in Soviet prison camps, a prisoner of conscience. He tells how on one occasion he was sitting under a tree in the prison yard, and had decided his future was hopeless. Life wasn’t worth living any more. He would just run for the barbed wire fence, they would shoot him, and it would be over.

But just then another prisoner walked over and sat down. They were forbidden to speak, but the other man looked right at Solzhenitsyn, and the two locked eyes. Somehow Alexander saw understanding and empathy in those silent eyes. Then the other man picked up a stick and drew in the sand of the prison courtyard the shape of a cross.

That unspoken message brought flooding back to Solzhenitsyn’s mind all he knew about Jesus, the Lion who is a slain Lamb. Hope returned and he changed his mind. He would hold on. Life was worth living because Jesus had also suffered, just as he was suffering. The story of the cross of Jesus has power! When you know you are loved by Someone who understands, you can handle almost anything.

A second powerful key for staying together when times get tough is at the end of the story of the seven seals – at the end of chapter 7. That’s the key – go to end of the story! Somebody said that life on Planet Earth is like a mystery novel. All the way through, you keep wondering how it’s going to end up. But someone else said, "I snuck a look at the end of the book, and guess what? Jesus wins!"

In 7:14 as the vision of the seven broken seals comes to its conclusion, John speaks of those who "came out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes…in the blood of the Lamb."

And then note verses 16 and 17: "They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

When Solzhenitsyn decided not to end his life, for two days nothing seemed to be any different. But the third day, totally out of the blue, without any explanation, the authorities set him free! He later learned that a large number of people had been praying for him. [Herbert E. Douglass, How to Survive in the 21^st Century, (Hagerstown, MD: Review & Herald, 2000), pp. 87, 88.]

The Bible guarantees that you have a future, if you simply keep trusting Him! And sometimes the way out is closer than we expect. So hang in there! When tempted to give up, read the end of the book. Read the last chapters of Revelation. Also the last chapters of The Great Controversy. You can endure almost anything if you know it’s only for a short time.

Now let’s note a third key: Chapter 7, verses 1 and 2, "After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God."

In chapter 6, seal after seal is broken open. Now here in chapter 7 God takes another seal and does something different with it. The Greek word for "seal" here is the same one that was used earlier for the seven seals on the scroll, but this seal has a different purpose. This seal is a mark of God’s ownership.

In the seals of chapter 6, it’s almost as if Satan is saying to God, "This world is mine!" God says, "We’ll see whose it is," and there’s a great controversy, and step by step God breaks up Satan’s ownership of Planet Earth. But in the process Satan wreaks havoc every time God opens another seal.

This contrasting seal in chapter 7 says to the devil at the end of time, There are some people down there that you can’t have. You may hurt them, but you can’t have them. I’m going to keep them for my own through the last great final tribulation. They’ll be unbroken in spite of the brokenness all around them.

So where does God put His seal on His endtime children? Chapter 7, verses 2 and 3, "And he cried 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, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.’"

This mark of God’s ownership is contrasted in chapter 13 with a mark Satan puts on his people at the end of time, called the "mark of the beast." Satan’s mark can be on the forehead OR on the hand. He really doesn’t care about your thoughts, your affections, your heart’s desire. If he can just get you to go along with his program by your actions, he knows he’s got you. But God’s seal goes only on the forehead.

The cover story on a 1994 issue of Science magazine was about a man who died over 150 years ago, in 1848. Phineas Gage was a railway foreman in Vermont; his crew was building a railbed through the mountains, and he was in charge of the blasting operation. One day something went wrong; a charge of dynamite went off prematurely; the blasting rod came up out of its drilled bed in the rock like a missile out of a silo. It slammed into Phineas Gage’s left cheekbone, went up behind his left eye, straight up through brain tissue and out the top of his forehead, landing many yards away. Amazingly, Mr. Gage remained conscious, was able to walk away, and ultimately had a complete physical recovery, except for loss of sight in his left eye, and scars on his cheek and scalp.

But something else was wrong. Phineas Gage wasn’t Phineas Gage any more. He had been a responsible employee, a loving husband and father, and a faithful member of his church. Now, even though he seemed just as intelligent as he’d always been, he apparently had lost all his morals. He lost interest in church and started using profanity. He became unfaithful to his wife, disinterested in his family, and so irresponsible at work that he finally had to be laid off even though he was just as good at his job as he’d ever been. He ultimately joined a traveling circus and, tragically, died some 13 years later.

The 1994 article in Science was an analysis of Phineas Gage’s injury based on computer tomography of his skull, which is in a museum at Harvard University. The question was, "Exactly what part of his brain did Phineas Gage lose?" The conclusion: He had lost large portions of both the left and right regions of his frontal lobe. [Science, May 20, 1994; in Neil Nedley, M.D., Proof Positive (Ardmore, OK, Neil Nedley, M.D., 1998), pp. 257-259]

The frontal lobe, the portion of your brain right here in your forehead, is the part of your mind where moral reasoning takes place. One of the main differences between an animal brain and a human brain is the size and function of the frontal lobe. Your forehead is where God put your conscience. And He promises here in Revelation 7 that, if you let him, he’s going to stamp something into your frontal lobe, indelibly imprint something into the forefront of your mind, that will keep you "together" through the traumas and tribulations of these last days, when the whole world is coming apart at the seams.

Now to the bottom line. As we compare Revelation 7 with Revelation 13, we see that the contrast between the seal of God and the mark of beast has to do with moral behavior --- obedience to God’s commandments. There’s just one of the 10 commandments that specifically identifies the owner of the human race. Which one?

Yes, it’s the fourth commandment. That’s the "seal" of God’s law. Remembering the Sabbath day, and keeping it holy, is a powerful key to keeping your life together when things are tough. People who take time each week to break the hectic pace -- to lay aside the burdens of the other six days, and spend 24 hours in communion with their Creator -- those are people who aren’t going to fall apart under pressure!

I can personally testify that the seventh-day Sabbath is a marvelous blessing that builds resilience into your life and helps you cope with trouble. The Sabbath strengthens your family; it gives you a conscious connection with your Creator. The Bible assures us that true Sabbath-keeping (in the forehead not just on the hand!) will anchor you to Jesus in a way that will cement your life to His forever!

What are the three keys to survival which we find in the story of the 7 broken seals?

#1 - You have a Savior who’s already been to hell and back for you! The broken seals are in the hand of a slain Lamb. All the trouble in your life is under the control of Someone who loves you with everlasting love. When you know you’re loved, you can handle most anything! And YOU ARE LOVED! Jesus proved it by dying on the cross for YOU.

#2 - You have a future that’s already guaranteed, and you have a book that tells you what it’s going to be if you simply keep trusting Him. That Lamb is your Good Shepherd. Someday soon God is going to wipe away all tears from your eyes. When you know the trouble is going to end soon, it’s a lot easier to handle it!

#3- This Lamb of God, our Savior who is also our Creator, has given us a weekly appointment with Him that guarantees us a respite from trouble, even here and now, if we take advantage of it and make use of it to build an intimate closeness with Him. Sabbath-keeping is like a seal of ownership from our Heavenly Father – a key to serenity in a topsy-turvy world. When we choose to experience this weekly appointment with Him -- not merely showing up at church on Saturday morning, but setting the whole 24 hours apart for spiritual fellowship, for living the life of Eden, for communion with heaven, with family, with God and His people --- when we enjoy the Sabbath in that way, then "the peace of God, that passes all understanding, will keep your heart and mind, through Christ Jesus." [Philippians 4:7, adapted from KJV]

I want to invite you to make a decision about your Saturdays. Maybe this is a new concept. Can you make an agreement with God that you’re going to experiment with it? Or maybe you’ve been a nominal Sabbath keeper and today you need to make a decision to begin truly keeping it holy, sundown to sundown. Maybe you’ve kept Sabbath for many years, and you want to ask God for a deepening sense of His presence in your Sabbaths.

If God is calling you to some decision this morning, won’t you make an agreement with Him in your heart as we sing our hymn of response, #381, "Holy Sabbath Day of Rest"?