The Seventh Seal Explained
REVELATION 8:1
1 ¶ And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
The symbolic time frame of Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy uses the scale of 7 years per week (7 x 70 is 490, which is 490 years in total), which simply means that one day is equivalent to one year. And so if we do the math of one day being equivalent to one year, then a half an hour would be the equivalent to a little over one week (around 7.6 days to be exact).
**And we know that the series of the seven seals took just over a week to preach - beginning on the Sunday morning of the 17th of March 1963 and then ending on the evening of the 24th of March 1963 (around 7 days and 14 hours in total – or 7.58 days, that is counting it from the Sunday morning (of the 17th) from say around 8AM, to around 10PM on the Sunday Evening of the 24th, this would be 7 days and 14 hours, or 7.58 days), and so when use this timepiece from the book of Daniel, this equates to the sounding of the 7 seals on earth taking up the time of about a half an hour.
…And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
There was silence in heaven because the voice was not sounding from heaven - it was sounding from earth, and all heaven went silent in awe – the angels even quit their harping.
LUKE 17:24-30
24 For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day. (In other words, a worldwide shining forth of truth that would be accessible from around the entire world – and this is what the message of the hour is today, it is the great SON light of truth that is shining to the elect of God worldwide)
25 But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation. (We have seen the rejection of the word in this hour by the religious denominations)
26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. (they were totally unaware of a God sent prophet)
28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
(This is the future revealing of Christ in the form of a prophetic ministry)
I THESSALONIANS 4:16
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout (the shout is the end time message of this hour), with the voice of the archangel (this is the voice of the resurrection – we have heard this voice, and that voice is now inside of us), and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
This is the catching away of the physical rapture of when we are taken off the earth – but notice, these 3 events are in series, from shout, to voice, to trump, and so each event unfolds into the next one.
The Seventh Seal Explained
It is surprising as to how many people in the message are still not really sure about what the seventh seal is all about.
And so I thought it would be good to just talk about it in a way that we would try to explain it as plain and as simply as possible so that it would really help us to see what God has done and is doing in this time and hour that we are currently living in.
**It is important for us to notice that the first 4 seals can be learnt and understood quite easily by anyone who wants to take the time to study through it, because the first 4 seals are mostly showing us the mystery behind the history of the seven church ages, and also the 5th and 6th seal is not hard to grasp – but the seventh seal is where the mystery of the current event is taking place right now, and this is why that God has hidden it from all but the elect, because it is always the current event of what God is doing in the presentence that will always be confusing to the people who are not ordained by God to see it.
LUKE 8:10
10 And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.
That is why that many can hear the message of this hour and yet not understand it – it is because of the way that God has constructed the message in that He would have it preached by a man with a 7th grade education.
**In fact the whole way that God design the message was to hide the understanding of if from the wise and prudent.
**The seventh seal is the revelation of the coming of the Lord in our day – of the appearing and the revealing of Christ (of His secret and second coming) by the ministry of the revealing of the Son of Man which climaxes in the complete unveiling of the entire mystery of the bible.
**We always used to imagine that the coming of the Lord was at the very moment of when the rapture would take place and we would all be changed to meet the corporal body of the Lord in the air (that other dimension), but that is just the final part of what we now know of the rapture process of the three events of the shout, and voice, and then the last part (the trump) of when the saints of 2000 years of gentile church ages are raised and gathered with us on earth, and then we are changed in our bodies and the catching away takes place then.
THE.FEAST.OF.THE.TRUMPETS_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-16 SUNDAY_ 64-0719M
175 Notice, two thou-... hundred thousand demons turned loose upon those Jews (he is speaking of WW2 of the holocaust), when they burned them, they crucified them. They put bubbles in their veins. They killed them, till they had no more gas to kill them with. And they shot them, till they had no more bullets to shoot with. And they--and they done everything they could do. They cremated their bodies, and everything; and hung on fences, children and all, innocent people. Because they were Jews, they were done that way. But God said He give each one of them a robe, undeserving as they was; but His grace to blind them so that we could see. (This was what was revealed at the opening of the 5th seal – that these honest hearted Jews were saved in spite of what they had done by killing their messiah and king, yet they had to suffer through terrible tribulation because of it)
176 The Seventh Seal hasn't opened yet, you know. That's His Coming.
And so when the seventh seal is opened, it reveals the entire mystery of His second coming, not just the time of us going up in the catching away at the exact moment of the rapture – and I believe that that part will be revealed to us around the time of when it is about to take place, just as Noah knew the exact day of when the ark would be taken up, because all the mysteries are promised to be finished at the sounding of the seventh angel, and so this would also have to include the complete mystery of the second coming of the Lord that has been kept a secret right up until this time.
And for those in the message who still (for some reason) want to keep the seventh seal mystery closed… Here is a quote that tells us plainly that all of the seven sealed mysteries are opened.
THE.SEED.IS.NOT.HEIR.WITH.THE.SHUCK_ JEFF.IN V-6 N-4 THURSDAY_ 65-0218
127 .. But now He promised us a full square Meal, the full seven course Menu, for all the Seven Seals are opened, and everything is ready for the Word of God, to those who can receive!...?...
IT.IS.THE.RISING.OF.THE.SUN_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-12 SUNDAY_ 65-0418M
308 He is the One Who opened those Seals. He is those Seals, for the whole Word of God is Christ, and Christ is the Seals that was opened. What is the opening of Seals then? Revealing Christ.
The opening of the seven seals revealed Christ, and so that is Him, He is the mystery of Himself revealed by the unveiling of His word – and that is His coming in this hour.
What was Brother Branham trying to show us in all these messages that he preached after the opening of the seven seals?
“Who is this Melchisedec” - “There’s a Man here NOW who can turn on the Light” - “Christ IS the Mystery of God Revealed” – “Who do you say THIS Is” - “A Greater than Solomon is Here NOW” – “The Invisible Union of the Bride to Christ” – “The Mighty God Unveiled before Us” – “The Presence of God Unrecognized” – “It IS the Rising of the Sun” …
*All these messages were trying to show us that it was He Himself (Christ) that had come among us – the Lord HIMSELF.
CHRIST.IS.REVEALED.IN.HIS.OWN.WORD_ JEFF.IN V-4 N-10 SUNDAY_ 65-0822M
162 … Then come the Pentecostal age; then come in the different fingers and things, the Pentecostal age, of tongues, and nose, and so forth.
Now it's in the eyes. What good will you need eyes, or need light, if that eyes wasn't there to see? There has to be eyes, first, to see. And then when that come, He opened the Seven Seals and revealed the evening Light, taking all the mysteries that's been hid down through these church ages, and now revealed them as He promised to do in Revelations 10:1 to 7. Here we are today setting in the midst of the Word, and the Word being revealed to us by Jesus Christ.
**The second coming of Christ would be a secret coming that would not be a public show but would be acted out in a completely different way in comparison to how he came at His first coming in the form of a corporal human body of being born as a little baby.
**For a person to truly be able to be fully revealed, and for us to really see that person, we must be able to see their true motive and character – and that is why Christ IS “the Mystery of God Revealed”, because the mystery of Him revealed is the revealing of His great character by the opening up of the mysteries of the entire bible.
**He could never have been able to make Himself fully known to you by just appearing to you in the form of a human body, because even after His resurrection of when He appeared to Mary in His human form and she saw Him, yet that did not reveal Him to her, but it was when he called her name that she recognized Him.
*And so it was not his bodily appearing that revealed Him to her, but it was His word that He was revealed to her by, and it’s His word that He is revealed to us by in this hour.
QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS.ON.HEBREWS.2_ JEFF.IN COD WEDNESDAY_ 57-1002
284-456 …And let me say this, "You've never seen me." You've never seen me in all your life, and you never will see me. That's right. You see this body that declares this person that's in here.
*But the real person is what they are on the inside – of what their character is.
The two on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize him by his human form either – not until he broke the bread, and the breaking of the bread is when He opens and reveals the mystery of His word to you.
**And so Christ is revealed by the breaking of the word.
I THESSALONIANS 4:16 Opening scripture…
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout (the shout is the message of this hour that unveiled the full mystery of the character of God to us – His character revealed is Him), with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
REVELATION 10:1-2a (Revelation chapter 10 is the seventh seal – the coming of the Lord)
1 ¶ And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven (This is the coming of the Lord of what we read in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 of the Lord Himself descending from heaven with a message (a shout) that would gather the bride in order for Him to reveal Himself to her), clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:
2a And he had in his hand a little book open:
REVELATION 10:7
7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.
In other words, the Mighty God would be fully unveiled to us by the mysteries of God being made known to us.
THE.FEAST.OF.THE.TRUMPETS_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-16 SUNDAY_ 64-0719M
244 There was three stages of it, as I said. The martyrs, age of the martyr, for it; and then the stage of the reformers; and now the calling-out time.
245 When finished, at Laodicean Age, according to Revelations 10, the mystery of all the Bible would be knowed to the Bride. Is that right? [Congregation says, "Amen."--Ed.] Revelations 10. Listen close now. Uh-huh. Bride, called out by the Word; Christ Himself calling out the Bride, making plain Hebrews 13:8, that He's "the same yesterday, today, and forever," does the same, is the same.
THE.FEAST.OF.THE.TRUMPETS_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-16 SUNDAY_ 64-0719M
264 Look, I want to say one more thing. Closely now; don't miss this. How striking! From the seventh angel's (messenger of the Seventh Seal) Message in Revelations 10, was the Seventh Seal…
***This is why we know that the sounding of the voice of the seventh angel in Revelation 10 was the revelation of the seventh seal of the coming of the Lord. *Revelation 10 is the revealing of Christ to the elected end time gentile bride people through the voice of the seventh angel – and that is the seventh seal.
CHRIST.IS.THE.MYSTERY.OF.GOD.REVEALED_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-7 SUNDAY_ 63-0728
106 God's great mystery of how, it's a secret. He kept it a secret. Nobody knowed nothing about it. Even the Angels didn't understand it. See, He didn't reveal it. That's the reason, under our seventh mystery, when the seventh seal was opened, there was silence. Jesus, when He was on earth, they wanted to know when He would come. He said, "It's not... Even the Son Himself don't know when it's going to happen." See, God has this all to Himself. It's a secret. And that's the reason there was silence in Heaven for a space of a half hour, and seven thunders utter their voices, and John was even forbidden to write it, see, the Coming of the Lord.
SOULS.THAT.ARE.IN.PRISON.NOW_ JEFF.IN V-2 N-22 SUNDAY_ 63-1110M
137 The seven is always the mystery. Watch that seven, that's the finish. That was the Coming of the Lord.
*I am not sure how much plainer he could have said it – that the seventh seal was the coming of the Lord.
*When God first became a kinsman to man in the form of Jesus Christ (the God/man), He began with a public healing ministry that also included the revealing of the secrets of the heart like what we saw with the woman at the well – and it was these first two stages of His ministry that attracted the attention of the crowds, but all of what those first two ministries were was for the end purpose of His third pull ministry of the revealing of Himself to the elect of that day by the opening of their understanding to the revealing of Himself in the scriptures as we saw with the two on the road to Emmaus.
LUKE 24:27-32
27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
**And so we have seen the exact same pattern of that same ministry repeat itself in this day of the same Lord Jesus doing the same thing in a human vessel of a man that He used for His purpose in this hour, but again, the ultimate purpose was not about the public ministry of the healing gift that attracted the tens of thousands of people, but the real purpose was the third pull of the opening of the understanding of the scriptures that would reveal Himself to His elected gentile bride of this end time hour.
**The tomb had been opened, and the resurrection of Jesus had taken place at the rising of the SON.
But even though the tomb had been opened and the SON had risen, the eyes of the understanding of the elect for that hour had not yet been opened to what had been opened, and so Christ’s third pull ministry was not directed to the public this time, but it was now focused at the elect for that hour of which He would need to appear to each of them personally and open their understanding to what was already opened.
And this is also Christ’s third pull ministry in this hour - it is to reveal Himself to us by opening up our understanding to what has already been opened by the opening of the Seven Seals in March 1963.
THE.ANOINTED.ONES.AT.THE.END.TIME_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-3 SUNDAY_ 65-0725M
262 Notice, the very day when this messenger... Not when he starts on, but when he begins to declare his Message. See? The First Pull, healing; Second Pull, prophesying; Third Pull, the opening of the Word, the mysteries revealed. No more, there is no more higher order to reveal the Word, than prophets. But the only way the prophet can be vindicated is by the Word. And, remember, the Third Pull was the opening of them Seven Seals, to reveal the hidden Truth that's been sealed in the Word. Do you see it?
QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS.ON.THE.SEALS_ JEFF.IN SUNDAY_ 63-0324M
462-1 {33} …Of all the times that I've been behind the pulpit at the Tabernacle, I have never, never in any time of my ministry ever worked into the realms of God and the spiritual realms as it's been this time. Yeah, it's beyond anything I ever did in any time of my ministry, in any meeting at anywhere like this. Mostly, it's on healing; this is revealing of Truth by the same Spirit (See?) same Spirit.
**The first two pulls in Brother Branham’s ministry was the revealing of the son of man ministry by the manifestation of a healing ministry that attracted the attention of the religious public with the first pull of the sign in the hand (like Moses with the sign in his hand) and then in the revealing of the secrets of the heart like what we saw with Sarah at the time of the appearing of God in the form of a human being of when He visited Abraham and Sarah in that form.
**And so this is the pattern of what we have been witness to in this hour of what we also saw in the ministry of Christ at His first coming of God with us in the form of Jesus Christ – His first pull was healing, and then there was the revealing of the secrets of the heart (His second pull).
**But those first two pulls were only there to attract the attention of the people for the real purpose of attracting the elected group of that hour of which the third pull would be the opening of their understating of the scriptures that would reveal Christ for that time and age to them.
*And so that was what took place at the last stage of Jesus ministry of when He revealed Himself to the elect of that age and opened up their understanding of who He was by the events of the prophesied scriptures that were being interpreted in flesh for that hour.
I THESSALONIANS 4:15-17
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel (And so this is what has literally taken place in our day – the LORD HIMSELF has descended from heaven with a shout – and this shout was the message of the hour that climaxed in the opening of the seven seals of which opened our understanding of the entire mystery of the bible was opened up. Because the bible cannot lie, and so the reality of these things cannot fail to come to pass, and so it would be in the days of the voice of the seventh angel that the full mystery of God would be finished by the secret of the entire bible being opened up and made known and completely unveiled to an end time elected group of people. And this is why you and I are individually and personally an integral part of the fulfilment of these scriptures), and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.