Revelation 7:4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:

Did you focus on the 144,000 or the word sealed, or that those numbers sealed come from every tribe of the sons of Israel? Israel is the later name of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham.

What we focus on will determine what we seek to understand. Many have focused on the number and play a numbers game.

Revelation 7:1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.

The word begins in verse 1 with “after this”. Nothing of our understanding about Revelations 7:4 can be considered without having a proper understanding of what came before.

Revelation 7:14 (parsed) “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.”

Once again we find ourselves delving into prophecies which are spoken about with much discussion, confusion and arguing. No one, and I mean no one will come to a proper understanding of that event until after they have survived the “great tribulation”.

Let us back up for a moment and look at the naming of the tribes that contain 12,000 each. In the list Levi and Joseph are named. When Israel entered into the promised land God named each and every tribe that inherited the land. Levi and Joseph were not named among those tribes. Reuben lost his rights to a double portion as firstborn, as he had defiled his father’s bed (Genesis 35:22 – 49:3-4). His inheritance of double portion was transferred to Joseph, but he did not receive any land allotment directly, his two sons received their father’s land portion. Levi did not receive land because the Lord was their portion.

Ask any of your Jewish friends which tribe of Israel they come from. I have. They don’t know.

This isn’t about what we know or understand. It is about letting the Word of God play out by faith and not arguing about genealogies.

I understand the desire to know what is coming. I too was caught up in the signs and wonders of the future. What I discovered in doing that was that I wasn’t walking in the will of God.

There will always be those who are willing to tell you what Revelations mean.

We can listen to them or we can listen to the Spirit of Truth who speaks to us from the will of God for us for the here and now. How we exercise our free will speaks to our character, not God’s.