1And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour (KJV).
From a position of extreme noise in all the earthly convulsions, the Lord takes us to complete silence in heaven for a half-hour. Now there is silence in heaven. All the heavenly hosts will soon be engaging in actual warfare against earth. But it is God's "strange act" (Isaiah 28:21). He "hath no pleasure in the death of him that dieth." God is love.
The seal opens and not a voice is heard; not a motion is seen and an awful frightful pause is sensed. One might want to realize this as the calm before the storm or the calmness in the eye of a hurricane. Those familiar with these storms realize that the worst is yet to come. With this pause in heaven everything is mute and motionless. The silence will create a deep fear upon the earth's inhabitants. It raises their anxiety. As Jesus opens the seventh seal, the scroll (5:1–8a) is now completely open, and the remaining earthly judgmental events are ready to begin.
The second set of sevens is about to be unleashed upon the earth, the seven trumpet judgments. Therefore, the seventh seal unleashes seven trumpet judgments. This silence, which precedes the seven trumpets, creates a suspense of which the world has never before seen nor felt and it imparts a sense of anxiety about awful expectations that the unrepentant of this world are about to realize.
After the pause, the actions from the Throne resume. God has imparted additional fear and He is about to embark on a worse set of judgments than what we have seen so far.
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