After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.

Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea:  “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”

Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel. From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben 12,000, from the tribe of Gad 12,000, from the tribe of Asher 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000, from the tribe of Simeon 12,000, from the tribe of Levi 12,000, from the tribe of Issachar 12,000, from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.  (Revelation 7:1-8)


Holding Back The Four Winds

On the surface it would appear that the four angels are merely holding back the four winds to prevent them from damaging anything on earth before the appointed time, and that is certainly part of the story. In fact, it‘s openly stated in the text that these angels will be “given power to harm the land and sea.” But first, God’s people will be "sealed" with a mark in the same way that they were sealed in Ezekiel 9:4 before Jerusalem was destroyed. 

When we examined the ‘seven seals’ in earlier posts we noted that the word for ‘seal’ denoted a signature rather than a physical seal, as with the signet ring wax seals that were used on Greek documents of the day.  That fact completely changed our understanding of what the seven seals of the Revelation are all about, since they actually described the seven signatories on Christ‘s ketubah.