Day 130

“AFTER THIS I SAW FOUR ANGELS STANDING AT THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH, HOLDING BACK THE FOUR WINDS OF THE EARTH, IN ORDER THAT THE WIND MIGHT NOT BLOW UPON THE EARTH, UPON THE SEA, OR UPON ANY TREE.” REV 7:1. (NASB)

The Seals had focused on the unrighteous, but the “interlude” focuses on God’s people as part of the 6th Seal. This is the global end-time “sealing” of the people of God.
This text affirms God’s ability to exempt people from judgement. He is able to hold back destructive winds and preserve His people in any circumstance. Jesus is intimately concerned about His people and arranges for their protection.
We have all heard stories of people being saved miraculously. But life is not always that simple. What about the many situations where the righteous are not protected? Sometimes we face death because of our own choices and actions. Sometimes we do so because we have ignored proper warnings. Sometimes we face death because we didn’t realize the warning was from God. Sometimes death simply seems to be the result of the random course of events. But often God is at work in tragic circumstances, in ways that may not be clearly discerned until much later. When my first child died at birth it was no body’s fault. We live in a world that has been affected by the curse of sin. Death is every where and often that curse is random and unexplained.

William Wilberforce, for example, lost his father at age nine and his aunt and uncle were childless. But through a combination of these two circumstances, Wilberforce was exposed to the evangelical preaching of the abolitionist John Newton. Wilberforce ultimately became the leading champion of abolitionism in England until slavery was abolished in the entire British Empire. So we must trust in God’s ability to protect and deliver, knowing that in a given situation it may not occur. But even if death or tragedy does occur, we know that God can bring something good out of it in the long run.
True faith is trusting the outcome to God. Sometimes we need to have the faith to not be healed or delivered. Many of God’s faithful were not delivered! Their sights were on a far better outcome.