The Silence of the Seventh Seal - Part 1

Jim Scudder, Jr. (0:03)

The writers have appeared. The conditions on the earth have rapidly deteriorated. Men are now imagining that the day of wrath has come, and they've called on the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them.

SPEAKER_2 (0:22)

Welcome to InGrace with Jim Scudder, the senior pastor of Quentin Road Baptist Church in suburban Chicago. He is the author of Why Life Hurts, Healing Hurt, and co-author of Evangelism Made Simple.

Jim Scudder, Jr. (0:38)

Hi, this is Jim Scudder. Welcome back to InGrace. Here as we start a new week. I hope your Monday is going great. Happy Monday to you. And we're in a series called Armageddon's Dawn, and today we're going to be talking about Revelation chapter 8 when we read the first verse, it says that when he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half hour. My late father, Dr. James Scudder, used to joke about this verse, and I will mention that in the message, but I'm telling you, there is an awe, there is a pause as we start to see what is being revealed. And the seventh seal is opening up another series of judgments on this earth in the tribulation period. We've already looked at the first six seals, the white horse of peace, the red horse of war, the black horse of famine, the pale horse of death. We heard the martyrs crying, and that was acknowledged in the fifth seal. And then the sixth seal, the mountains and the islands were moving, the sun is dark and the moon is turning to blood. And now there's silence in heaven. And that doesn't seem like a judgment, but it sure is when you start to realize what is coming upon this planet. Well, we're gonna get into all of that in just a second. Right before we do, let me invite you to Israel. We're going to be going in February, and it is gonna be just the most amazing trip. I've been going to Israel my whole life, even in the midst of intifadas and conflicts and wars. I've just kept going, and I've always felt safe. As a matter of fact, I feel safer in Israel than I do in much of where I live in the Chicago area. I just feel like it is just a blessed place. And once you go there, you get it. So if you'd like to come along with InGrace, get a free brochure by calling us right now, 1-800-78-GRACE.

1-800-78-GRACE. Or go to ingraceradio.com. This is a solidarity tour, so you get to see the land, and you also get to stand with Israel and meet some wonderful people on the way.

We know the world is going to come to an end as we know it. We're not alarmists, but we're also realists. We're Bible believers, and the Bible speaks in many places, especially in the last book of a cataclysmic time upon this earth where God's judgment for sin will be poured down on this earth. Someone has said there is a cup of wrath that God will once full pour out. There's a time in which he will not allow sin to continue. We praise God that he didn't zap us the very moment we sinned, right? Because then there would be no hope of salvation. There would be no us. And so, God and his grace allowed for time for us to receive the free gift of eternal life. But there is an end to that invitation. There is a day in which people will not be able to receive that invitation of grace anymore. But we still have that time today. And I'm hoping by studying the word of God, we can come to that realization that God will eventually judge sin and put all that down.

We are talking today about the Seventh Seal. Now, when you hear seal, if you're like me, you're thinking capital S-E-A-L. Seal, like a Navy seal, right? I'm fascinated with special forces. We have the greatest armed forces in the world, and the greatest of all our armed forces, arguably, but I think we can probably say this with certainty, are the Navy Seals, Seal, S-E for C, A for Air, and L for Land. The Seals are excellent operators. But do you know how they get to be Seals?

They have to first get through the application, and that takes a lot of time to receive the permission to go train. And the training involves about 30 months of training. Some of that's very intensive. One week is called Hell Week, if that says anything about what they have to go through. But they have to go through Bud's training, which is intense training that includes one evolution, which is called Drownproofing.