163 - The Purposes of God [B]

The Purposes of God. Rev. 7:1-3

Often when people are overwhelmed with the presence of sorrow, suffering or injustice in the world, a question that has been raised is the question: How can God let this happen? If we listen to the sub-text of that question there is a clear assigning of blame or responsibility to God, that somehow God is not watching, not looking, and how can God really let these kinds of things happen to His creatures? In a broader sense this is a question that underlies the doctrine and teaching that we find in Revelation chapter seven.   

The question the unbelievers ask in chapter six is: Who can survive the judgments that come as a result of the wrath of the Lamb? The answer is going to be given in the seventh chapter and it involves two groups of people: the 144,000 people who are sealed and the group of martyrs from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation. Notice that there are two groups of people that are the focal point of chapter seven: God's grace in salvation to a group of Jews and God's grace and salvation to Gentiles. Jews are mentioned first; Gentiles are mentioned second. This fits the pattern of to the Jew first and then to the Gentile, but it also shows a returned focus in the Tribulation period to God's plan for Israel, cf. Romans 9:3—to the Jews belong the promises and the covenants. God has not forgotten those. So the answer to the question as to who will survive is that there will be an untold number, a specific number of 144,000 Jewish evangelists and then another group of Gentiles from every tongue, tribe and nation on the earth.   

It has been pointed out that there are four questions that we need to address: a) the nature of God; b) the nature of evil and suffering; c) the nature of justice (it has to start with the character of God and His judicial outlook; d) history does have a purpose, God is working things out and we must understand that He allows evil and suffering to continue to operate because in His omniscience he knows all the facts and He is going to ultimately brings things to a right conclusion.

God's character, i.e. His righteousness, justice and love (His integrity), is demonstrated most fully in the universe where evil is allowed to continue for a time. This will, of course, entail injustice and suffering. We are living in a fallen world, the cosmic system, where people are imperfect, are fallen people with a sin nature which predisposes them to self-centredness, to arrogance, to promoting that which is best for them over against anybody else. In a setting such as this we are going to have all kinds of conflict. Because evil is real and evil exists there will be conflict, suffering and adversity. This does not mean that God is out of control but it does mean that God knows more than creatures do and He is ultimately able to resolve evil and we have to go back to His character to understand that and to rest in that. Evil in the universe is temporary. The purpose for evil being allowed to continue is in order for God to judge evil and end suffering. The first part of this statement is designed to emphasise that no matter how out of control circumstances in our lives may appear, or how profound the injustice may be, God is still in control, His character does not change. The second part, the purpose clause, indicates that there is a reason—we may not fully understand because we do not have all the data, just a small portion. God knows all the facts, all the details. He has a purpose to finally and completely judge and remove evil and suffering, and He does this through the context of human history. He is able to weave all of the details of history together for good—Romans 8:28.

Evil isn't simply the absence of good. It is much more than that; there is something substantive when it comes to the nature of evil. Justice is not something that is creaturely oriented or circumstantially oriented but it is related to the absolute standards of God's own righteousness. So evil and suffering have to do with a violation of God's righteousness and a promotion of an agenda and a standard that is contrary to God's own righteousness. Justice, then, is the outworking of God's righteousness in His dealings with His creatures, and all of this fits within the divine purpose of history.

Satan's desire is to rule over all of creation instead of God; he thinks he can do it better than God can do it. As we go through the Scriptures we realise that he led a rebellion among the angels and led a third of the angels to follow him in his rebellion. All of this happened before man was created. But God judges the angels—Matthew 25:41 ^NASB "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.'" If God has already created the lake of fire for the devil and his angels why aren't they there? So at this point we have to use our thinking in terms of all the details that Scripture gives us related to this rebellion, the person of Satan, the outworking of things related to the angels, and it is inferred logically but with tremendous justification that apparently God postponed the execution of that penalty in order to demonstrate certain truths related to creatures and their service to God.

This raises several questions. How can a loving God send His creatures to such a horrible punishment—eternity in a lake of fire? It seems like the punishment far surpasses the extent of the crime. Another is, why doesn't God just give the devil a chance to see what he can do in running the universe? These ideas are present within God's demonstration of His justice and righteousness throughout history. And that is exactly what God does. He creates mankind as an experiment in the classic definition of the terms "experiment." Classically an experiment is not something we do to see what will happen; an experiment is done in order to demonstrate a known truth. What God is doing in history is not introducing any wrong elements. Because of His omniscience He knows exactly what will be demonstrated, and what is demonstrated is that the creature cannot not ever do anything independent of the creator without causing incredibly damage; and the unintended consequences are far more severe than the act itself. The act of disobedience that was the issue in the garden of Eden was just eating a piece of fruit. When they ate that piece of fruit it was that simple innocuous act of disobedience to the creator. The result is what we see around us: wars, famine, disease, and all manner of suffering and adversity. It all came out of that simple act of disobedience to the creator. So God is demonstrating in history through all the various dispensations is that no matter what the circumstances might be, no matter how much God provides or how little God provides, no matter how much revelation or how little revelation man has, that sin permeates everything and creates a vast host of unintended consequences. The only thing that can prevent it is total dependence upon God.

Eventually what God has to do is bring this to a judicial resolution, which is what the entire book of Revelation is describing—how God brings evil and injustice to account. Then we have the creation of a new heavens and a new earth where there is no sin and evil and where there will never be an introduction of sin and evil, and where sin and evil has been punished and restricted to the lake of fire. So God has a plan and a purpose in all of this and he is demonstrating all the various permutations. This is what God is doing in history, and so history is directly related to the outworking of this angelic rebellion that began with Satan's rebellion with God before Genesis 1:2. This is why when we come to Revelation we see this tremendous emphasis on angelic involvement. There are some 65 references to angels in the book out of approximately 170 in the entire New Testament.

The scene in chapter seven has shifted. The scene in chapter six is primarily on the earth but when we come to chapter seven we shift back to a heavenly perspective.  Revelation 7:1 ^NASB "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree."  The words "after this" indicates chronologically so that the events of chapter seven are following chapter six, but he sees another vision—"After this I saw." The events in chapter seven occur roughly at the same time as the events in chapter six. It is interesting that at this point we begin to focus on angels again. The winds are not normal winds, they are winds related to divine judgment. This is why they are told to continue to hold them back and not release them until the 144,000 are sealed.

Revelation 7:2 ^NASB "And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea." That is what the releasing of these winds would do. [3] "saying, 'Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads.'"

The term "four corners of the earth" is merely a term like "the rising of the sun" or "setting of the sun" that is used in everyday language of accommodation, when we know that the earth is rotating. We know that it is not the sun that is moving but the earth that is moving. So the four corners of the earth is a reference, most likely, to the four points of the compass.

This verse has long been derided as reflecting a naïve "prescientific" concept of earth structure, one that supposedly viewed the earth as flat with four corners…. In terms of modern technology, it is essentially equivalent to what a mariner or geologist would call the four quadrants of the compass, or four directions. This is evident also from the mention of the "four winds" which, in common usage, would of course be the north, west, south, and east winds.

Parenthetically, accurate modern geodetic measurements in recent years have proved that the earth actually does have four "corners." These are protuberances standing out from the basic "geoid," that is, the basic spherical shape of the earth. The earth is not really a perfect sphere, but is slightly flattened at the poles. Its equatorial bulge is presumably caused by the earth's axial rotation, and its four "corners" protrude from that. Henry M. Morris, The Revelation Record, p. 126.     

The four winds of verse 1 relate to the judgment that God is going to bring about on the earth. Winds are often used in Scripture as a description of divine judgment. So this is not talking about the normal wind but about the winds of judgment. The question is whether this is occurring after the seals or before the seals. We would argue that this happens at the same time or just preceding the seals because it is going to answer the question: Who can survive this judgment? Those who can live through these judgments are those who are sealed. So it has to do with answering the question related to the judgments of those initial six seals. The angel of verse 2 is going to be used to seal a certain number of Jewish individuals for a specific purpose and the seal is designed to protect them from these judgments. We know from later passages that many of these 144,000 will be martyred during the Tribulation period so the purpose of the sealing is to protect them from these particular judgments. So the angel calls on them not to begin these judgments the earth until these 144,000 have been sealed. This is the grace of God operating during the Tribulation. It is not a time simply of judgment, it is a time of grace and salvation. These 144,000 become evangelists during the Tribulation period, and it is through their witness and their ministry that millions of Jews and gentiles will be saved. But it tells us that God is restoring His emphasis to Israel, it is not the church. That is a tie-back to the covenants that God has made with Israel.