The 7 Seals of Revelation

Ryan and I have been at the Bible Time and related projects since late 1997. At first the project centered on the Bible Time website, but the materials and scope kept growing. We're now running a collection of websites, each driven by some specific discovery that we found along the way.

Recently, we were looking at the 5th chapter of the book of Revelation, and realized that much of what we cover overlaps the various ways that the Bible has been sealed.

To understand just how profound that claim is, first review the text of Revelation chapter 5:

The passage describes a scroll that has been sealed with 7 seals. Jesus is the only one worthy to open the scroll by lifting the seals. Everyone marvels greatly and worships when the scroll is opened.

Without first opening the scroll it is hard to proove that the scroll in question is the Bible itself, but let me state without full proof, that the scroll in question here is the Bible itself. The Bible has been sealed in 7 distinct ways so that it cannot be fully understood.

The process of opening the Bible, especially the process of removing the seals, depends on a discovery of how exactly the Bible has been sealed. The process of finding the meanings of each of the seals, especially as that relates to the text of the Bible, is the process of removing the seals and thus opening the Bible to more complete understanding.

We have been blessed to have been called to work this problem, and the various websites that we've been working on these past 10 years covers the same material as these 7 seals. Of course we had no clue what we were working on until after those websites were online.

Each seal is explained in detail later in the Book of Revelation. Lets look at each and how those seals have prevented full understanding of the text.

Seal 1

This is a small clue.

We read later in the book that Jesus is the one who rides the white horse conquering the world. This is part of an answer, but it does not answer the base question, how, exactly, does the text of the Bible get sealed by the actions of someone conquering?

This question is answered in part through another riddle, contained at the start of the next chapter. Here there are 12 seals, and most of the tribes of ancient Israel are listed by name. These seals are the more complete explanation of the riddle.

This establishes the timing of the conquering of the earth. It is bounded by the sealing of a group on their brows.

This helps explain the riddle. The brow is the place on the human body that symbolizes remembering and forgetting. The brow is used in the prophecy spoken over Joseph in the last chapter of Genesis, and one of his son's, Manasseh, has a name that means to forget.

Scripture was placed on the forehead, or brow, in order to symbolize not forgetting.

Those who are sealed are those who have forgotten who they are.

Who is that?

Chapter 7 continues with a riddle, and it explains how to find the lost tribes of ancient Israel.

Not to give away the story, which is on www.bibletribes.org, the point here is that if you don't know who, or where the lost tribes of ancient Israel are now, then you cannot understand scripture itself. One aspect of our understanding of Scripture is blocked, or sealed, by our collective loss of understanding of who these tribes are today.

Why is the conquering metaphore used for seal 1? Because these tribes would be responsible for most of the warfare of planet earth for the past 2500 years. The promise to Abraham was that he would inherit the entire planet and that process began when the Israelites crossed the Jordan river and began conquering Canaan.

The process of conquering the entire world for Abraham in a military sense continued when the Israelites left ancient Israel and began conquering the rest of the world.

Knowledge of their modern identity is a seal, and it prevents understanding of full meaning of the text of the Bible, since many of the prophecies of the Bible relate to these people groups and what will happen to them, specifically, in the 4 centuries before Jesus' return.

Seal 2

A great sword, or large sword, or fat sword?

How does a fat sword both cause death, and seal up the Bible?

There is a base idea here that the Bible, when properly understood, leads the reader to a more complete understanding of Jesus. It also prepares the reader to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. It also prepares the reader to take on an intimate, ongoing and personal relationship like the people in the Bible had themselves with Jesus.

By sealing the text, by preventing it from being readable or understandable, this multi-step process is prevented from even starting. The seal thus brings death.

In this particular seal, the main object bringing death is this fat sword.

The riddle as to how a fat sword brings death is found when we understand the word sword as used in the Bible.

The word, "sword," is a symbol. It is defined in Ephesians

The admonition in Ephesians is to pray, at all times, using the sword which is the word of God. The phrase "word of God" is a loaded term and has a double meaning. It is both Jesus, and the words he speaks to each of us, and the written word, the Bible. These are the 2 sides to this double edged sword.

So, in this seal, a fat sword, kills. How so?

How so when this is a seal over the text of the Bible itself? If a sword is the Bible itself, then a seal over the bible is a fat sword, or a fat Bible.

What is a deadly, or killing fat Bible?

The issue is given clear text as nearly the last thought in the entire Bible:

Adding to the words of the Bible, to the sword, makes it fat and makes it deadly.

How are fat Bible's produced? By adding text.

This brings on curses to those who add the text and it brings death to readers.

It is curious that we've been called to work on an audited Bible Translation (at www.opensourcebibleproject.org) and we have strugged greatly with how to publish a Bible that is not fat. We're leaning towards calling the typical preface and translators notes as added words, and deadly.

It is also curious that we've had to study the question of what books properly make up the canon. What, exactly, is the Bible? We answered this question by answering a related question. By ordering the books, we find there is no way to add books beyond the 66 books found in the standard Protestant Bible. (See www.bookorderbible.org for more.)

What are fat Bibles? Here are some examples:

Spiritual death comes when people add words to the text of the Bible, and mix those words up with God's words.

The teaching gifts generally involve explaining the Bible to others. Moses, Ezra, and many others down through history have done this. The problem comes when anyone does something that a new believer will confuse with the text of the Bible itself. When this happens the sword has been made fat and kills.

Seal 3

Famine in the normal sense causes food to become very expensive and thus not available to everyone. People die in famines for this reason.

Curiuosly, instead of discussing this idea through price, the passage uses a device, a balance, which is a way to measure and relate 2 equal but different objects, in this case food to weight. Or even more precisely food to price.

In the normal case, the non-famine case, the balance is equal, there are to sides of equal weight, and the buyer is satisfied with the transaction, so too is the seller. The balance is level when people are being fed satisfactorily.

In the famine case there is an imbalance, and the buyer is not satisfied, there is not enough food.

Remember, this is one of the seals that is placed over the Bible so that its meaning is lost and the reader cannot understand the text.

The idea of 2 objects, being compared through a device, or being "weighed" is an idea that shows up frequently in the Bible. All matters are to be established on the testimony of 2 or more witnesses. This idea shows up most clearly here:

This statement makes clear that God has spoken in the composition of the Bible through redundancy. This redundancy has a purpose. It was no trouble for God to speak this way, and it is a safeguard for the reader. (Note especially the NIV wording.)

To properly establish what the Bible has to say requires weighing as on a balance various passages of scripture against other related passages of scripture.

When this is not done, as in so many churches today, famine results.

We are aware of at least 2 internal systems provided in the Bible that provide the 2 sides for the balance. This comes up in the Book Order Bible study where the 66 books of the Bible are constantly repeating the same 66 points. This also shows up in the Bible Time work especially related to prophetic ratios of time seen all across the time line. Both of these systems have been hidden and thus the text has been sealed.

Note curiuosly that the passage in Revelation excludes the oil and wine, which are protected by this seal. Importantly, oil represents the Holy Spirit and wine represents the blood atonement of Jesus for our sins. These 2 things are not lost by this seal, even though much of scripture is sealed by being out of balance.

Let me illustrate one of the hidden balance systems with an example.

The 10 commandments show up in Exodus 20:

The Book of Exodus is in part structured around a replay of the entire Bible. The book is picking off themes from each book in order. When it gets to this part the Book of Exodus is picking off themes from Ezra.

Curiously, Ezra has 10 chapters, 1 chapter for each of the 10 commandments. This is a 1 to 1 ratio, 1 verse to 1 chapter. This is each side of the interpretive balance that is to be used so that famine does not errupt and instead the reader is satisfied.

When we take Ezra, at 1 chapter per commandment, we find an illustration of each of the 10 commandments worked out in detail so the reader can see exactly what each of these commandments means in practice.

  1. Shall have no other gods. In Ezra 1 the temple objects are returned to Jerusalem after having been put before the gods in Babylon.

  2. Shall not make graven images/ With the consequences of this reaped to the 3rd and 4th generation. Ezra 2 lists off the generations, sometimes 4 deep, that returned to Jerusalem in Ezra's time.

  3. Shall not use YHVH's name in vain. In Ezra 3 the congregation takes great care to do exactly what God had said to do.

  4. Shall remember the Sabbath. In Ezra 4 work on the construction of the temple comes to a stop.

  5. Shall honor father and mother. In Ezra 5 the congregation's work is shown to be following God's orders and the king's orders. Note here that the "Father" in question is Father God and the "Mother" in question is the King of the land. This puts an important interpretive twist on this commandment, not obvious from the text of the Book of Exodus on a simple read. This also sheds further light on Ephesians 6.

  6. Shall not Kill In Ezra 6 the king issues a decree about how anyone who stops work on the Temple shall be killed. The general pattern here is knowledge of God brings life, and stopping that work kills. Thus it was capital. Note how this commandment links so closely to the principle of the seals in Revelation, how they prevent the spread of the word and thus case death. Removing the seals is like opening the temple, and brings life.

  7. Shall not comit adultery. In Ezra 7 includes a letter from the king and orders the priests not to be touched. Adultery is more than simple sexual infidelity. Adultery is not keeping promises. Something not obvious from the Book of Exodus alone.

  8. Shall not steal. In Ezra 8 a long list of articles is weighed and cataloged before the journey overland from Babylon. The list is used to show, at the end of the journey, that all items were accounted for, none were stolen. Not only no stealing, but keeping records to show no stealing took place.

  9. Shall not bear false witness In Ezra 9 the people who have taken foreign wives have said that practice was OK. They've spoken better of these women that they should have. This is an opposite that what is usually understood from the Book of Exodus where someone speaks down of someone in court. Bearing true witness means speaking correctly of someone, no matter what the situation.

  10. Shall not covet In Ezra 10 the people have coveted the wives of the people around. A direct contradiction to this commandment, and an illustration as to what happens.

To a first time visitor this list may have seemed ad-hoc, and it may have seemed alot like any sermon you may have heard in Church. The fundamental difference is the methodical way in which all of scripture can be balanced against other scripture in a very mechanical way. This is not the ad-hoc interpretive strategy taught in seminary. It works against all passages in all parts of the Bible with equal veracity.

The summary replay tables on www.bookorderbible.org provide a sense of the scope of how many places scripture can be weighed against other scriptures just as done here with the 10 commandments. (And we haven't begun to touch on the mathematical ratios used for the calendar at www.bibletime.com. Another example of the use of the balance to break the seal that prevents proper understanding of scripture.)

Seal 4

Remember what we are looking for is the way each of these seals prevents understanding of scripture. Of course there can be other application, but none relate to the context verse where 7 seals were seen on the Bible itself.

The first clue in this passage is the use of the mathematical ratio of 1/4th. The Bible is made up of 66 books. Those books are of different lengths, so ratios like 1/4th don't fall out on book boundaries, at least not very often.

The New Testament, though, is very, very close to 1/4 of the entire text of the Bible. A good way to test this is by looking at the page numbers, beginning to end, in a printed bible, and then looking at the page number for the start of the New Testament. It will come out very close to 3/4th of the way through the Bible.

What is it about the New Testament that causes death? It reveals the story of Jesus, his incarnation, his ministry, and his crucifixion, as well as his resurrection and his commissioning of what would become the Christian church? What has happened to that 1/4 that causes death?

The clue is "sword, famine, death with wild beasts"

Before going further I want to explain the language system of my cat. My cat is about 10 years old, I've had her since she was a kitten. Across nearly all of that time I've worked out of my house so I am around my cat nearly all day every day.

In that time I've come to see that she has a pretty expressive language system.

She has several things that she communicates through body language. If she wants to be petted she will make a petting action with her paw. If she wants to go outside she will stand by the door. If she wants any door inside the house opened she will stand by that door. She expresses love by a blink of both eyes at the same time. She has a variety of sounds she makes when she is happy, not just purring, but something quite close to a language. There is a certain meow she uses when hungry, another when her box needs cleaning.

Her language is not English, but I've also come to see that she does understand a certain amount of English. She of course knows her name, and when called out loudly she will come. She eventually learned that &qout;cat" was a close synonym and began paying attention when she heard the word. For a long time I spelled C-A-T if I wanted to talk about her to someone else in the house. This eventually stopped working as she learned the spelling. Say C-A-T at the dinner table and she is sure to jump on it, expecting a hand out.

Her language is not English. It is a "beast's language" which is enough for her to get by around the house. She can easily communicate her needs and she can understand enough when someone is saying something to her. But, her language is quite simple. It is the language of one class of beast.

The clue in the passage in question is "sword, famine, death with wild beasts"

This, of course, as it applies to the written word of the Bible, or the language of beasts.

The word sword is the same sword, the Bible discussed earlier. Famine is getting an imbalanced diet, or not enough of a diet of some things. The diet, of course, is a diet of information from the Bible, something upset or caused by the language of wild beasts.

What is it about the New Testament that has been sealed by something akin to the language of wild beasts?

The best clue for interpreting this comes from the structure of Revelation itself. It too, like the Book of Exodus, is running again through the books of the Bible. Where is Revelation at this point? Like the 10 commandments in the Book of Exodus which are at Ezra, so, too, is Revelation at this point hitting themes from Ezra. Without belaboring this one, Ezra switches languages from Hebrew to Aramaic at this very point. It is reinforcing the issue as being one of language change.

Of course the New Testament, the last 1/4 of the Bible is also in a different language, but at least to most people in the western world that language is thought to be Greek, not Aramaic like in Ezra. That is the problem. Ezra suggests a language change, as does Daniel, but not to Greek, but instead to Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus himself.

Are Aramaic and Greek functionall equivalent? Or is there a fundamental difference. And, if Greek is a problem, what is the solution?

There is a fundamental difference between the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Aramaic and all other languages. That difference springs from the nature of language itself.

Hebrew and Aramaic are built on the same 22 letter alphabet. There are final forms in both languages where the last letter of certain words is drawn differently, but the 22 letters are the same, no matter how they are drawn.

Those 22 letters each have specific meaning from which each word in those languages are composed. An exmaple to illustrate this point:

The Hebrew word for Fire is: אש (ALEPH-SHEEN)

The word is the root for the English word "ASH." The ALEPH becomes A and the SHEEN becomes SH. See the change in meaning across the centuries, from fire, to that produced by fire.

There is no deeper way of understanding the English word, ash, it is just that, ash, and no more.

This word, though, in Hebrew, has considerable additional meaning. (As does every other word in Hebrew.) These letters, ALEPH and SHEEN each have specific meaning of their own.

ALEPH is a pictogram for an ox. The SHEEN is a pictogram for teeth. The ox is the strongest of all animals, and in this use the ALEPH is picking off the aspect of the ox that is strong. SHEEN, on the other hand, was originally drawn as teeth, and this use of the letter picks off what teeth do, which is consume. So, the Hebrew word for fire means "Strong-consumer." Unlike other forms of destruction, something that has been burned by fire is usually totally consumed. Those things which are not consumed by fire, most notably metals are made pure by fire. Why? Because fire is a strong-consumer.

The root words in the Hebrew language system are usually built out of 3 letter pairs, and each word has a meaning defined by the choice of letters. Except for Aramaic, no other western language system works the same way. There is no deeper meaning discoverable by the spelling of a word. At best the history of the word can be discovered, as we did here with ash being shown to derive from the Hebrew word for fire. That is as far as English, or any other western language, can be carried.

The Aramaic language has a different vocabulary, different spellings for the same basic words, but Aramaic still shares the same 22 base letters, and Aramaic shares the same pictogramatic meanings at the letter level. And, the same pictographic system works for Aramaic as well as Hebrew.

It is beyond our scope here, but it is a facinating study to look at the difference in spelling between words in Hebrew and in Aramaic and to look at the difference in meaning at the pictogramatic level. (Try "tree" for a fun example.)

The New Testament, at least as known to the western world, is written in Greek. Note only does it not built up from an underlying language system, it is not "engineered" in the sense that Greek words do not carry meaning up from their spellings.

This second-order language quality is seen in no other western languages. It is so foreign that even college level Hebrew text books ignore this fundamental aspect of Hebrew vocabulary. College level Hebrew textbooks usually start listing vocabulary words, and their English meaning, expecting students to learn just as they would any other western language. These textbooks do not derive the meaning implied by the spelling, because there is no parallel language feature in any other language and Hebrew can apparently be understood without understanding this level of the language.

Note, though, the difference betweeen Hebrew/Aramaic in the Bible and Greek/Latin/German/English is a difference that is roughly approximated by the difference between my use of English around the house and my cat's use of language. In English I have a langugae system that is far more robust and complete than anything comprable known to my cat, except for those words that she recognizes as related to her normal language system of grunts, purrs, meows and screems.

The Hebrew Old Testament and the corresponding original Aramaic New Testament have running under them a level of meaning and language essentially unknown to people who speak any western language. Our languages are to the text of the Bible a language of beasts compared to what God used when he inspired the original authographed copies.

So what happened?

In the early 1800s western missionaries ventured to the mountains in Northern Iraq. (This in keeping with the parallels between Ezra and Revelation that I'm skipping here.) There they found scrolls, carefully copied for nearly 2000 years, which contained Aramaic language copies of the New Testament that were provably not translated from the Greek.

This was a surprising find.

New Testament poetry, unknown in the Greek, word-play and metaphor, even mis-translations to Greek could be seen after careful study.

By the late 1800s the first English translations were done. The commercially available translations still date back to the 1930s and remain unaudited. Producing reasonable translations of those Aramaic manuscripts remains a challenge even today.

What this suggests is that the New Testament, 1/4 of the Bible, was translated into Greek, ie: turned over to the language of beasts. This was done in order to seal up the text, to prevent anyone from fully understanding the text.

History of that translation was lost. Those who kept the original copies were allowed to live relatively undisturbed until the early 1800s.

In the Bible, when a covenant was entered into, one copy was left open, the working copy, while one copy was buried, the reference copy. If there was ever a time when there was dispute over what the original copy said, it could be dug up. This is what happened to 1/4 of the Bible itself. Buried in the east until it would be needed.

Seal 5

As with the other seals, the question we're asking is how does this seal apply to the Bible? How does something in this story explain how knowledge of the text of the Bible has been kept from people?

The key phrase in this entire quote are the words, How Long?

This question is so fundamental in common thinking that there are even theologies built up around the idea that God stopped counting time. (Absurd, but common.)

What is it that is hidden by this seal? The Calendar used to construct time references in the Bible.

Without the calendar it is impossible to know what time it is, nor when anything predicted in the Bible's pages is going to happen.

The answer to the question of Calendar has an entire website devoted to it. (See www.bibletime.com for more.) We don't need to go into details here.

In short summary, there is a 30 day/month calendar that starts with Adam. It counts time through all the important events in the Bible, and it continues to count time even to this day. It is possible to find that calendar's original stucture, reconstruct it, and then map between modern dates and dates on that calendar.

This could not be done until after the Yom Kippor war in late 1973, when various prophecies related to the Jewish return to modern Israel had fulfilled. This event allowed the reconstruction and resynchronization with that original calendar. It is now posssible to answer questions of time, it is no longer sealed from people.

Seal 6

Again, remember the context. Each seal is placed over the Bible, so that parts of the Bible are hidden. This passage is a parable for how the Bible was sealed in this 6th way. Our task is to unscramble the riddle so we can show how the Bible was sealed, and why.

Curiously, this 6th seal has more text in its story than any of the other unsealing passages. This suggests that this is the most important way the Bible was sealed.

In this passage a great shaking happens. Shaking upsets the natural location of things. The sun goes dark and the moon stops shining and then the heavens seperate.

This is a parable about something done to the Bible so that it was sealed such that it could not be understood.

What was that? The books of the Bible were shaken, they were seperated. Their natural places on a knowledge tree were lost, like figs falling off, and they were rolled up seperately. (See especially the Lamsa translation,(LAM) taken from Aramaic, which as it often does uses the expected language.) What happens to a whole work when it is rolled up seperately? It was effectively hidden in plain sight.

By verse 15, it gives a summary of the men who had written the Bible. Some rich, some wealthy, some well known, some in chains, and they were hidden in the rocks and clefts. Their works were hidden so that the people they each represented would be unware, and unable to understand the wrath of the Lamb that would befall them.

Realizing that the books of the Bible are now out of order is in fact the biggest hurdle to putting them back into order. Nobody even thinks that there could be a specific, internally verifiable book order. But, there is.

What does this order do? It provides the original, inspired order of the books of the Bible.

This has 2 key side effects. First, it also clearly establishes the canon, what books belong in the Bible. Second, it provides an interpretive strategy for understanding what the Bible actually means.

How does finding the order change the meaning?

This question has been asked frequently by people who only know the common Bible book orders. As long you think the Bible is an anthology, a group of seperate works written by various authors, then there is no order that is any more special than any other.

But, if the book is written by a single Author, say Jesus himself, then there might just be a special order, an order where the meaning takes on a full form, and is not the equivalent of a bunch of "sound bites."

We know of several key things that happen when the Bible is put back in the inspired, original order:

We've documented our understanding of the Bible's book order at www.bookorderbible.org

Seal 7

This is the 7th, and last seal placed over the text of the Bible. This is the shortest of the unsealing passages, only 1 verse long. Like most lists of 7 things, this one represents a Sabbath, a rest, and it uses that language.

The question, though, is in what way has the Bible been sealed relative to a 1/2 hour time reference?

The most important aspect of this quote is that this 1/2 hour is the smallest time unit in all of scripture. There are no direct references to time units any smaller than here.

How would you measure a 1/2 hour time reference? With a clock.

What sort of clock? A clock like used all over the world today? Nope.

A Bible Clock is what is needed to measure time references under 1 hour.

Why would anyone care about sum-hour time references? How does not knowing the clock seal the Bible?

The largest collection of hour based time references come in the Gospels, especially dealing with the Passion Week and the crucifixion of Jesus.

Those references are important, because they can be used to reconstruct the timing of this the last full public week in Jesus' public ministry.

Jesus' public ministry had important prophetic structure. He was replaying the the history of mankind written down in the Bible. That structure replayed history until he raised the son of the widow of Nain. After that point Jesus had passed his own resurrection in world history and was now predictively acting out world history that was still to come.

By the time of his passion week the pace of events changed considerably. Instead of narrative based on days, the text switches to narrative based on hours. By the day of his crucifixion, there are many references to time across the day measured in hours.

It takes a clock, a Bible Clock, to fully understand those time references. When fully understood, what can we learn?

The darkest times in Jesus' own public ministry matched exactly the darkest times in world history. Just as Jesus' own ministry began slowly, with events scattered days, even weeks apart, there was not much going on in human history either. But, by the time of the industrial revolution, the pace of change in world history was now much faster.

Those 3 hours of darkness, when Jesus breathed his last? Overlays exactly the center years in World War II. Jesus' body, dead, being placed in the tomb matches exactly the Jewish return to modern Israel. His death, was their collective death in the disaster that was World War II.

I could go on, but that story awaits another time. We have a website dealing with Bible Clocks. Visit www.bibleclocks.com for more.

Final Thoughts

I've been at this project 10 years or so. The project has grown and morphed along the way, biggner now that I ever would have imagined 10 years ago.

I am as surprised as many readers are to learn the coverage of the Bible that we've been given the responsiblity to share. Especially the sealed parts of the Bible, the parts that are not generally granted to people to understand.

We're nowhere near done at this, with much more work, especially internal, hidden tech related work needed to get all the pieces pulled together.