And now, the moment we have been waiting for: the seventh seal is opened! Silence follows. You can feel the anticipation. What is going to happen? Is this the end of the age? Yes, it is the end, but the end comes now in seven more stages, heralded by seven trumpet blasts. For centuries the cry of the church has gone up to heaven: ‘Come Lord Jesus!’ In the light of all the injustice and suffering, people have wondered: ‘When is God going to come and finally destroy evil on the earth?’ It is as though all these prayers were being stored up in a censer for the time of fulfilment. With the breaking of the seventh seal, we see this time coming. In Old Testament times the priests would carry a censer of hot coals into the temple to burn incense before God. The rising smoke represented the prayers of God’s people going up to heaven. Here in Revelation 8 we see that censer, full of hot coals, thrown down to earth. And so begins the day of reckoning. Remember how the souls of the martyrs had cried out saying: “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (6:10). Well now John, who had also suffered much evil, looks on as their prayers take effect. The day is coming. John sees it here in dramatic symbolic form. It is the day when the amnesty ends and justice must be done. In the meantime, however, there is a message of grace to share. But this time of opportunity will end; perhaps sooner than we think.
Pray for those close to you who need to receive God’s grace in Jesus.
Read Revelation 8:1-5.
