Revelation 7:1-8 Series

Revelation 7:1-8

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.”

All of God's creation which is everything has only the ability in which God has given. God being sovereign over everything either wills something to happen or allows something to happen.

Most Christians today do not believe in the sovereignty of God rather they believe in a limited God that is only available if needed. Oh, many will say they believe in the sovereignty of God but when asked a few questions we find they don't. All you need to do is ask someone about “freewill” and you will find out some interesting things about their faith very quickly. The response I hear most is God has given over His will to mankind so they can have freewill, or something like this. After all we are not robots are we?

God at no time gives up His sovereignty over His creation or else He ceases to be God and at that point people become their own god.

So it's no different with angel's, God's will is worked through angel's as God's will works through the believer. It may not be exactly the same because we have an indwelt Holy Spirit and I do not see this in angel's.

We do see Satan and fallen angel's which gives us some indication that there is at times a will but I wouldn't say it is free. So was this all a part of God's plan? I would say so.

Freewill would mean that there is no influence of any kind that causes you to make a decision one way or another. I would say as we look at Adam and Eve pre-fall that they may have had true freewill but we are not told that. We know that after their fall that ever person from that point on inherited the sin of Adam and we are told that our nature had become corrupted and sinful because of it (Romans 5:12). That corrupted nature then influences us in a way that causes us to make certain decisions. Scripture says we are a slave to it because it controls us in every way.

Post salvation scripture tells us that upon salvation we are given a new nature in which righteousness is at least at some level desired. That desire with the new nature is also helped and influenced by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which motivates a believer greatly.

So you see that we are both before believers and after believers heavily influenced and I would say compelled to make decisions one way or the other. We may have had the chains broken to sin but our flesh and our mind are still working against the believer because they are still influenced by sin.

So why would God do this you may ask? For His own reasons that benefit him alone. He is God and He knows what works out best for Him which is the primary reason He does what he does.

So back to the angel's. These four angel's are being instructed by this fifth angel in verse two who comes into the scene and has authority from God to tell them to hold back the winds. Obviously these winds would be very destructive and at least for a time they need to be held back so that God's will may happen in the order He needs it to happen.

These four angel's were given the destructive power of wind by God and now held back by God for His purpose.

We are told in verse three that the fifth angel comes with a seal from the living God in order to seal the heads of the servants of God, a specific group of servants, the 144,000.

4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: 5 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed, 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000 from the tribe of Gad, 6 12,000 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali, 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, 7 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, 8 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.