Iv. The Seven Seals (5:1 - 8:5)
IV. THE SEVEN SEALS (5:1 - 8:5)
Chapter 4 recorded a vision of God the Creator. Now comes a vision of God the Redeemer, the Lamb who has conquered through his death. The last chapter ended with the worship of the Creator and this will end with the worship of the Redeemer. These two chapters are very important for an understanding of the message of the book. There are mysteries in life. We feel ourselves caught up in the world’s evil and misery and we cannot break free. Some of us become rigid determinists and we all, at times, feel a sense of hopelessness and helplessness in the grip of forces stronger than we. The world’s agony is real. And the world’s inability to break free from the consequences of its guilt is real. This chapter with its seals that no-one can break stresses human inability. But it does not stop there. More important is the fact that through the Lamb the victory is won. The seals are opened and God’s purpose is worked out.
This is the first of a series, each having seven symbolic representations of plagues. Here it is seven seals; later we have seven trumpets and seven bowls with the seven last plagues. Some have held that the groups denote separate and successive events. Since it is not possible to recognize any one series in the descriptions of the others this view must remain possible. But it is perhaps more likely that there is a unity. Kiddle aptly cites the reaction of Cortez and his men when from their peak in Darien they surveyed the Pacific (p. 296). Doubtless it was with ‘a wild surmise’, but doubtless also their gaze shifted, now taking in the immediate foreground, now the middle distance, but always returning to the great ocean which dominated the scene. For John, the End is the significant thing. He does not take in the whole in any one vision or series of visions. He deals with different aspects, sometimes covering the same ground from different points of view and sometimes taking in different features of the landscape. Thus we may legitimately expect some things to recur in the visions, but always new details will make their appearance.
The events symbolized in this book often resemble those in Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse (Mt. 24; Mk. 13; Lk. 21), though he does not use the same symbolism. But it is clear that John is not composing freely. As the early church read his book it would recognize that he is dealing in another fashion with realities first spoken of by Christ himself.