A The Sealed of Israel, Ch. 7:1-8
The first part of the episode shows Israel's share in the sure and unfailing results of God's elective and redemptive purpose, and through this the wider truth that God seals and keeps all his own (cf. Ezek. 9:1-6).[406]
1 The Angels Holding the Winds, Ch. 7:1-3
At the bidding of another angel who ascends from the sunrising as the sign that he brings light and hope, [pg 136] and who bears the seal of the living God as the token of his authority, “the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea” restrain the winds, which are apparently those of destruction and judgment, until the act of sealing has been accomplished: the symbol of the delay of God's final judgment upon the world until all his chosen ones are sealed, i. e. are marked as the subjects of redemption, or until his redemptive purpose is complete—the choice beginning with Israel. Four, the earth number, is the number of the angels, corners, and winds in the vision, indicating the world-wide character of the judgment; and the sealing is upon earth, though apparently not to be thought of as occurring in any particular point of time, and not therefore to be placed, as by some, just preceding the final judgment, for in a wider sense the sealing stands as a symbol of redemption as a whole, viewed in effect as a process concurrent with the trials of the seals, and illustrated by its operation in Israel.[407] The time of holding back the winds is the entire period of divine grace, and the sealing shows the brighter side of the former picture of trial and suffering—God is ever doing what he did in Israel.
2 The Number of the Sealed, Ch. 7:4-8
The redeemed are sealed upon the forehead, the sign of the visible and personal ownership of Christ, but the act of sealing is not revealed; as the act of God it is hidden, and only the number of the sealed is given, a hundred and forty-four thousand, i. e. the square of twelve, the national number, multiplied by a thousand, the cube of ten, the number of completeness,—twelve thousand from each tribe, or twelve, the number of the tribes of Israel, multiplied by a thousand, the number of heavenly completeness: the symbol of a vast, complete, but indefinite number chosen from the people of Israel and kept unto eternal life as the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb, the true or ideal people of Israel, who are in a sense representative of all the redeemed. Other interpreters, accepting the apocalyptic-traditional view of late writers, regard the first section of the episode (v. [pg 137] 1-8) as a reproduction in form or substance from a Jewish apocalypse, while the second section (v. 9-17), where there is so manifest an expansion of the horizon, is the Christian development of the same idea, showing how the older vision may be understood in our time.[408] Such views evidently have strong attraction for the modern mind, but it may well be doubted whether such a view solves as many difficulties as it creates, for it assumes the existence of documents that have no evidence on which to rest except the theory which assumes them.