The year is AD 66.1 Nero Caesar has banished John, the last living apostle, to the Island of Patmos “for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Nero, who sometimes wears the skin of a beast while performing despicable acts of torture, has been murdering Christians for the past three years. Now, he has dispatched his lethal army to squelch a violent rebellion in John’s homeland. John sees these developments as “the tribulation” of which his Lord had spoken thirty-six years earlier (Rev. 1:9; cp. Matt. 24:21).
Contrary to what Nero thinks, God has sent John to Patmos. The Almighty intends to give a series of visions that will sustain him and other Christians during the tribulation. Future generations of Christ’s followers will know these visions as the book of Revelation.
Jesus said this tribulation would come in his generation (Matt. 24:21, 34). That generation is almost at an end. The visions are, therefore, about “things which must shortly come to pass” (Rev. 1:1).
Jesus also associated this tribulation with three important developments: the destruction of the Jewish Temple, the end of the Mosaic age, and the start of the Messianic Age (Matt. 24:1–3, 6, 13–14, 21). The new age will be the time when the Lord’s presence (Gk. parousia) dwells among his people.
The first vision2 (Rev. 1:9–3:22) assures John that Jesus will be with his people during the tribulation and throughout the new age. Jesus organized his people into churches (Matt. 16:16–19; 18:17). This congregational structure will serve as the Temple of God after the Mosaic-Age Temple disappears (cp. 1 Pet. 2:5; 1 Cor. 3:16). The vision of Christ walking among his churches on earth shows how he intends to sustain his kingdom in the Messianic Age (Rev. 2:1).
The second vision (Rev. 4:1–8:1) concentrates on the tribulation that will end the Mosaic Age. John knows this is God’s curse against apostate Israel. Fifteen centuries earlier, Moses wrote of this curse. It would come in “the latter days” of Israel’s existence as God’s covenant nation (Deut. 30:1; 31:29) and would precede the blessings of the Messianic Age (Deut. 30:1–20). John is living at the intersection of the curse and the blessing God had pronounced upon Israel.
Before the curse begins, God opens a door into heaven and allows John to see what is happening there (Rev. 4:1 – 5:15). Jesus is the glory of that place! He is “the Lion of the tribe of Juda” who has redeemed his people from their bondage to sin in the true Exodus (Rev. 5:9). His people “shall reign on the earth” during the coming Messianic Age (Rev. 5:10) that will follow the judgment about to come.
John also sees a book with seven seals (Rev. 5:1). Only Jesus is worthy to open the seals and start the judgments against Israel (Rev. 5:5). The first seal reveals the Lord riding forth to conquer (Rev. 6:2), a prophetic image of God defeating his enemies (cp. Hab. 3:8). Apostate Israel will be the first enemy he overcomes.
The opening of the next three seals reveals the devastation coming to the land of Israel. Jesus will take peace “from the land” and grant Death power over a fourth part “of the land” (Rev. 6:4, 8, YLT; emphasis added).3 John knows Jesus is about to use the Roman armies to do this.4
The apostate Jews have killed many of John’s fellow Christians. All the other apostles have perished, some at the hands of the Jews (e.g., Acts 12:1–3). This has fulfilled Jesus’s prophecy, given on the day he delivered the Olivet Discourse: “Behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city” (Matt. 23:34).
The time for Israel’s long-promised curse—which Moses pronounced and Jesus reiterated—has come. God will avenge the righteous blood shed “on the land”5 in the apostles’ generation. This judgment will leave the Jews’ earthly house desolate (i.e., the Temple; Matt. 23:34–39).
When Jesus breaks the fifth seal, John sees “the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held” (Rev. 6:9). They ask Jesus how long they must wait until he avenges their blood “upon the land” (Rev. 6:10, YLT). The Lord assures them the delay will only be “for a little season” (Rev. 6:11).6 The time is at hand (Rev. 1:3). Their vindication involves “things which must shortly be done” (Rev. 22:6).
The breaking of the sixth seal brings the cosmic collapse Jesus had foretold (Rev. 6:12; cp. Matt. 24:29; Luke 21:25). This common prophetic figure depicts God’s destruction of a city or nation (cp. Isa. 13:10; 19:1; 34:4; et al.). It does not indicate the end of planet earth! The collapse of Israel’s world, to keep with the metaphor, will occur in Jesus’s generation (Matt. 24:29–34). As John writes Revelation, the time for this judgment has come.
Before it arrives, God issues an important command to his angels “standing upon the four corners of the land” of Israel (Rev. 7:1, YLT).7 They must seal the true servants of God among the tribes of Israel to protect them from the destruction about to come (Rev. 7:3–8). Paul had described this remnant of Israel (Rom. 9:27 in context) and Jesus had instructed them how to escape the coming judgment (Luke 21:20–23). This theme of remnant preservation is not new.
The remnant of Israel will escape the “great tribulation” Jesus foretold (Matt. 24:21). They are the nucleus of the church—the new Temple of God. John sees others join them:
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:9–10)
John asks one elder in heaven about the identity of this remnant. He replies,
These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 7:14–17; emphasis added)
God will dwell among his people during the Messianic-Age parousia (presence) of Christ.
Jesus’s breaking of the seventh seal introduces a brief silence in heaven. This heightens our anticipation of the next vision and, perhaps, things beyond the coming judgment (Rev. 8:1).
The vision of Jesus as the Seal Breaker is complete.
Epilog
Josephus and other historians describe the “great tribulation” that fell on Israel during the AD 66–70 period. These descriptions confirm the vision of the seven seals.
Footnotes
- Inmillennialism undergirds the following account. The date AD 66 is one of several options available for this framework.
- See the outline of these visions in Mapping God’s Highway in Revelation.
- The Greek word used here (gē) can mean either “earth” or “land.” Translators must decide which is better in a given context. Inmillennialism takes this vision as a description of God’s judgment of apostate Israel. “Land” fits this context better. We have discussed (here) the mourning of the tribes of “the land” in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24:30).
- The Roman armies invaded Israel in AD 66 and the temple fell in AD 70 after a “great tribulation” of 3-1/2 years.
- Paul R. McReynolds, Word Study Greek-English New Testament, (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 1999), Matt. 23:35.
- The Greek words are chronon mikros, an expression that resembles Paul’s “very, very little time” (mikron hoson hoson) that would precede the coming destruction Christ was about to bring (Heb. 10:37–39).
- This wording also has an astronomical advantage over the more common translations: planet earth does not have “four corners,” but the land of Israel does.
