The Seven-Sealed Book

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 8, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 19.

The Seven-Sealed Book

Appeal of Creation for Its Redeemer

The great drama of earth is the book of the Revelation. The stage is this world. The time is earth's week of millenniums. The actors are empires, kingdoms, republics, churches, and earth's millions of men and women. The great Author is God. The Director, the Central Figure around which all acts and scenes revolve, the Lord Jesus Christ. The denouement, the outcome, is great with grief and glory, with tragedy and triumph.

Often a part of a great oratorio, or masterpiece of sacred music, may be sung independently of the whole. Of itself, it is a glorious unit, helping to compose the aggregation of units in the masterpiece. So it is with the great drama of the Revelation. It is composed of several parts, and we present before our readers one of the remarkable divisions of the great drama in this paper.

In the fourth chapter, as men have divided this wonderful book, the prophet is in vision transported to heaven, where from the great center—the throne of Deity—he looks out upon the earth with its awful tragedies and needs. Next to that throne are the seven lamps of fire, symbolical of the omnipresent Spirit of God. Then the redeemed twenty-four elders, assistant ministers to our great High Priest from the tried of earth. Then the prophet sees countless hosts of angels and men, arranged in the forms of a lion, a calf, a man, a flying eagle. It is worthy of note that these creatures, according to Jewish tradition, were the emblems upon the tri-tribal standards of Judah, Ephraim, Reuben, and Dan. See Num. 2:3, 10, 18, 25. We also find them represented in combined and perverted forms in the symbolic sculptures of Assyria and Babylon. They represent the hosts of God connecting earth and heaven; for according to Ezekiel, these symbolic hosts, full of the eyes of the beings which compose them, made by one Mind, are upon the earth, and are lifted from the earth. Eze. 1:15, 19, 21. They are God's agencies working out of the world's confusion, the wheels within wheels, the order of God, and the glorious triumph at the end, "to the praise of the glory of His grace." They bring His throne, so to speak, among earth's myriads, and even the wrath of man is made to praise Him.

Chapter 5 opens with another scene. In the hand of God lies a book, written within, but close sealed with seven seals. The importance of the sealed message is indicated by the challenge of the King:

"Who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof?"

And the prophet tells us that no creature in God's universe was able to open the book or to look thereon.

John "wept much." The fate of a world was in the balance. A word of comfort comes to him, "Weep not." The challenge is accepted. "The Lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome to open the book and the seven seals thereof."

The prophet hears of a Lion; he looks, and behold "a Lamb, standing as tho it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth." It is one of the divine paradoxes—lion, lamb, symbols of courage and timidity, of power and helplessness, of war and peace. The Lion of Judah is the Lamb of God. "The weakness of God is stronger than men." The Lamb overcame, prevailed, conquered by dying, conquered by yielding. He purchased all by giving all. He saved by suffering.

He did it all that He might save men; for "He gave His life a ransom for many;" "He died for our sins;" He "gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." How the God-breathed testimonies throng in that the Lamb suffered and died to save us. But He overcame, He died, to open that seven-sealed book. That book, then, is God's Gospel of life, the message of our salvation, utterly worthless unless there is in it the sacrifice, the life, the potency, the divine and eternal love of God in Jesus Christ.

Seven is a number denoting completeness. Horn is a symbol of power, eyes, of wisdom. The seven horns are expressive of His completeness of power; the seven eyes of His completeness of wisdom; the sacrifice unto death, the completeness of love. "For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell;" "for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full." Col. 1:19; 2:9. What wonder, then, the threefold song which follows the victory of the Lamb.

"Worthy art Thou to take the book, And to open the seals thereof; For Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood Men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests, And they reign upon the earth."

"Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive The Power, and Riches, and Wisdom, and Might, and Honor, and Glory, and Blessing."

"Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, And unto the Lamb, Be the Blessing and the Honor, and the Glory, and the Dominion forever and ever."

The Breaking of the Seals.

One seal is broken, and one of the four living creatures, cries as with a voice of thunder,

"Come."

It is the utter wo and misery and weakness and need of earth voiced by the strong cherubim to the Overcomer. Come to save the lost and dying. May we not also believe that those who compose that living creature are also appealing to the lost of earth to come to the overcoming Lamb. In response to that call goes forth a Rider on a white horse, conquering and to conquer. (Compare with Ps. 45:2-5.) Christ goes forth in the glory of His Gospel message to conquer hearts; mightily did it go forth in the Pentecostal days of the early rain. Mighty in God to save has it been in hearts receiving it thru earth's sad centuries. More mightily shall it close in these days of the latter rain, in the development of a church fitted for translation.

Three times again are seals broken, and three times from the living creatures there comes forth the "Come!" "Come!" "Come!" God's Messenger in His mighty Gospel message rides still, but men reject the message. He offers peace and plenty and protection and salvation; but the mass reject them all. The world must needs meet the fruit of their own sowing, the results of their choice. And therefore in response to these calls there ride forth messengers on red, black, and pale horses, symbols of war, famine, and death in every form. There is no peace to the wicked, to him who rejects Christ's Gospel. Matt. 10:34, 35; Isa. 57:19, 20. The very crops of earth fail when God's people are faithless, till bread is doled out by weight, and black famine rides on a ruthless conqueror. Eze. 4:16, 17; 5:16. And when rebellion is added to rebellion, still other calamities logically follow till sword and famine and evil beast and pestilence, God's "four sore judgments," because of men's perversions of His law, are ravaging the earth. See Eze. 14:13-21.

These riders of Revelation 6 ride on to the end. The white-horse Rider still sends forth His arrows of truth, destructive to sin, salvation to believing sinners. As the early church departed from God and became connected with the world, there followed in cumulative power, war and famine and evil beast and pestilence. The Dark Ages reaped its fill of all, and especially in the fearful

pestilences which destroyed its myriads and wasted cities. Yet men went on wickedly, and the great professed church of that age not only refused to turn to God, but persecuted those who did believe the message of life.

The Seven-Sealed Book.

(Continued from page 6.)

These dire reapings will continue to the end. Men may talk peace, but prepare for war, till the climax is reached in the great battle of Armageddon. The evil beasts, dangerous animals of every kind, reap their harvests of thousands every year, and if the noxious insects and bacteria are included, bid fair to swell it to millions. With all the improved facilities of transportation and increased knowledge of agriculture, there are millions of lives doomed from famine in both Russia and China to-day. And following these will stalk dire pestilence, nurtured by all the evils to follow.

There are yet three seals to be broken. The first four deal with man's heart, and the influence of his choice upon the earth's surface, down to near the close of the eighteenth century. The events which follow the breaking of the next two seals look forward to the judgment of God upon men for their crimes against Christ in the person of His saints, and take hold of the very stability of the earth itself. The saints in the grave, tho waiting in unconscious silence, are represented as pleading for justice, even as Abel's blood cried to God from the ground. Gen. 4:10.

At the opening of the sixth seal occurred the great earthquake of Lisbon, Nov. 1, 1755, a truly great earthquake known to affect nearly the whole earth, notwithstanding men had no instruments to record it. On May 19, 1780, came the darkening of the sun and moon; on Nov. 13, 1833, the falling of the stars, or the great meteoric shower of that date. These were all met in the matter and manner described in prophecy.

The next event is the rolling up of the atmospheric heavens as a scroll, the voice of God from heaven saying, "It is done," and the prayer of those who have rejected the unchangeable mercy of God to hide them from "the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of His wrath is come; and who is able to stand?"

This part of this drama is interrupted for a little space to reveal the work which the mighty Rider on the white horse is doing among those who accept His message in the last generation—the sealing of His children preparatory to His coming. Of this sealing work now going on in the world, more hereafter.

When the seventh seal is broken, this wonderful part of the great drama ends. Rev. 8:1. There is a great silence in heaven. Are there reasons why the songs of praise to God should not continue?—No, but all the angels of God are permitted to escort the mighty, conquering Lamb to earth as He goes for His redeemed ones, conquerors in Him. He "shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels." Matt. 16:27. He "shall come in His glory and all the angels with Him." Matt. 25:31. "Not crowned with thorns and gory, but crowned with glory now." The pleading call of earth's wo has been heard, Come, come, come, come; the King has come, the joy and rejoicing of His people forevermore.