Take your Bibles and open them once again to Revelation chapter 7. And here in Revelation chapter 7, we continue our journey through this tremendous chapter. We have already seen the controversial parts of the chapter and tried to explain as best we could um the reason that we interpret it the way that we do and pray that you see the consistency with which this particular passage is handled, especially in light of all of the things that we have handled up to this point and all of the things that we will handle beyond this point.
It is important to acknowledge the fact that the interpretation here um the the answers that that we have given um the conclusions that we’ve drawn from Revelation chapter 7 um are are not the um most familiar, most common or most popular conclusions drawn from this particular text.
And and really as I as I’ve sort of walked through this, I’ve come to realize that that is a bit of an understatement. We have we become so convinced with the dispensational presuppositions and so familiar with those dispensational presuppositions that any interpretation of Revelation chapter 7 that does not include the secret rapture of the gentile church and the 144,000 uh being God’s re-engagement with uh literal ethnic Israel.
um being really just sort of outside of the bounds of proper interpretation. And as I’ve said earlier, my my prayer is that as we’ve walked through these texts, that it has been clear that what we’re dealing with here is a consistent interpretation of Revelation chapter 7 in light of all that we have done before and all that we will do up to and beyond this point.
We’ve also seen that this interpretation really is a byproduct of the hermeneutic that we use when we approach the book of revelation as a whole and that there are a number of different interpretive approaches to the book. Ours happens to be different than the approach that many in our day would take.
