Headline: THE WIND STOPS BLOWING!

Back to Revelation 6, the sealing of the 144,000.  Accidentally skipped.  

After the sixth seal, of the Seven Seals,  John sees four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, "that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."  

Where are the "four corners of the earth" ?  OK, we know this is figurative.  The four corners and the four winds mean the north, south, east and west.  Literary license has been taken.  And the angels will hold the winds so that they don't blow on the earth, the sea, or the trees.  What would happen if the wind stopped blowing?  I've never given this much thought.  I don't know how the wind could stop blowing.  Would it be a bad thing if the wind stopped blowing?  Maybe.  I'm not sure.  

But before they do anything, another angel "cried with a loud voice to them," "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads." This angel has the seal of the living God.  

Then John heard the number of people who were to be sealed, "144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel."  Many of us are not going to be one of the 144,000 because we are not one of the children of Israel.  Does one have to be one of the 144,000 of the tribes of the children of Israel to go to heaven?  No, of course not.  One has to be Jewish to be one of the 144,000.  

John goes on to divide up this group:  twelve thousand from twelve tribes.  The tribes are listed as Juda, Reuben, Gad, Aser, Nephthalim, Manassas, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zabulon, Joseph and Benjamin.  What's different about this list?  Well, for one thing, the tribe of Dan is left out of the list.  For another thing, Joseph is in the list.  Usually Joseph is represented by his two sons, so that gives Joseph a double portion.  

Who is Dan?  Dan is interesting because many rabbis of old and of the early church felt that the tribe of Dan would be the one that the Antichrist is descended from.  Legend is that Dan's mother was involved in idolatry and this tendency spread down through the generations.  Why is Dan omitted here?  One can only speculate, but the thinking is that the Antichrist may rise out of the tribe of Dan.  

For another thing, the tribe of Levi is included in the list.  Levi is usually left out because it is the priestly tribe.  Levi didn't inherit because the other tribes were to maintain the priestly tribe.  

As previously mentioned, I have heard people say, some of them to me personally, that one must be one of the 144,000 to go to heaven.  There are dozens of reasons why this is not true.  First of all, one would have to contradict a whole lot of other Scriptures if this were true.  Why do people have a tendency to cite one verse and invent from it things it doesn't say, and dismiss the rest of the Bible?  If one uses the argument that a verse is in Scripture to give it credibility, how can the same person contradict a thousand other verses that are also scriptural?  

The 144,000 are said only to be Jewish, and servants of God.   In the very next verse following the list of the tribes, John says, "And I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, from all nations and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands."

So there is a great multitude in the very next verse, "which no man could number of every nation," who are standing before the throne of God because they are among the righteous.  Are they on heaven or on the earth?  Either way, there are said to be more than 144,000 people who go to heaven, or will go to heaven right there in the same chapter.  

And where did the Jewish people originate?  They are the descendants of Abraham, who lived a few generations after the Flood.  Before the Flood one example of a known righteous person is Enoch, who was taken away to heaven without seeing death: "And Enoch walked with God and was not, because God took him."  The longest living person recorded in Scripture was Methuselah, who lived to be 969 years old, and was the grandfather of Noah.  By the way, you are a direct descendant of Methuselah, by virtue of the fact that only Noah, who was his grandson, and the other seven members of Noah's  family survived the Flood.  Methuselah died in the very same year as the year of the Flood.  I'm guessing he was swept away by the Flood.  Of maybe the Flood happened soon after his death.  But continuing with Noah.  Noah is a certified righteous person, and so was Job.  All these people are documented in Scripture to be righteous, and one of them taken to heaven alive, and all lived before there were any Israelites.  

This should logically tell us that we don't have to be one of the 144,000 to go to heaven.  

Is the great multitude of all nations also going to be alive on the earth during the Tribulation or do they represent all of the righteous?  I'm not sure.  I am sure that "a great multitude" would be millions, if not billions of people.  And I am sure that one can get saved during the Tribulation. 

After the 144,000 are sealed in their foreheads, the four angels holding the wind are ready to act, as the Seven Trumpets sound in Chapter 8.