Sealing God's People

Sealing God’s People
Revelation 7.1-8

Just when you think you are nearly at the top of the mountain, you crest a ridge and there . . . is another ridge half a mile ahead, steeper than the one you’ve just climbed. That is how it feels to get to this point in the sequence of the ‘seals’ which have kept the purposes of God, written on the scroll, from being put into effect. So far the lamb has opened six of the seals, and we are all agog for the seventh, which will surely bring a decisive climax, as the scroll can at last be read. But instead John keeps us in suspense, a trick he will play more than once more. Like the souls under the altar, we must wait and watch while something else happens first...