Hold your breath

A man walks into a bar, shadily dressed in a trench coat with the collar pulled up and a fedora pulled down over his face. A livid scar runs down his cheek, and his two tone shoes are dangerously polished. In his hands he’s carrying an accordion case. The bar falls completely silent. All of the patrons turn pale and freeze as the man strolls up to the bar and sets the case down on the counter. Everyone holds their breath. Suddenly, the man flips open the case and pulls out a machine gun! And everyone in the bar breathes a sigh of relief. Accordion music averted!Holding your breath is to wait for something specific to happen. An example would be, fans held their breath waiting for the final whistle. It’s a case of holding our breath until we hear the final outcome, to wait and see what’s going to happen next.“And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” (Rev 8:1)“In this verse the apostle John tells us there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. He must have estimated the time from an earthly perspective because such delays have little meaning in an eternal heaven. The silence is significant. Just as silence pervades a courtroom when the judge is about to render a verdict in a criminal trial, so the occupants of heaven fall silent as they anticipate what the Judge of the universe is about to do.

The implication is that when the judgment about to happen becomes visible as the seventh seal is broken and the scroll unrolled, both the redeemed and the angels are reduced to silence in anticipation of the grim reality of the destruction they see written on the scroll. The half an hour of silence is the calm before the storm. It is the silence of foreboding, of intense expectation, of awe at what God is about to do.” (Wiersebe)

In Smith’s Commentary it says,“Silence can sometimes be an awesome thing, especially in a tremendous crowd of people. You see what silence for fifteen seconds does. It seems like it expanded, quiet. It is sort of an awesome thing. And there in heaven with vast multitudes singing and worshiping and seeing all of the activity that is there, and suddenly there is silence when this seventh seal is opened. It is sort of an awesome time.”Which is kind of amazing as it says in Revelation 4:8:“And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say,“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.” God is so worthy, that day and night they do not cease to proclaim praise to Him. So something really jaw dropping is about to happen when there is a half hour of silence in heaven.But we don’t need to hold our breath, as we know the final outcome. Jesus came to earth as a baby, grew up, died on the cross and rose again defeating death and satan once and for all. So now, we can let out a sigh of relief instead!© 2022 Fluffy Puppy Publishing All Rights Reserved