Eschatology #11 (Part 1) - The Seven Seals of Revelation
About this sermon
Pastor Dean Odle interprets the seven seals of Revelation as a prophetic panorama leading to the future return of Jesus Christ. He connects the first four horsemen with religious and political systems, war, economic scarcity, and death, while emphasizing that the seal judgments overlap with later trumpet and bowl sequences. Contemporary institutions and geopolitical examples are used as supporting illustrations of the speaker’s futurist framework.
Chronological teaching outline
Select a section heading to play the sermon from that moment.
Odle introduces the seals within an overlapping structure of seals, trumpets, and bowls. He explains his futurist method and cautions against assigning every symbol from a single headline without comparing the rest of Scripture.
The rider on the white horse is interpreted as deceptive religious conquest rather than Christ. Odle connects the bow, crown, and victorious movement with a false spiritual power that expands before the later judgments intensify.
The white horse discussion broadens into institutions seeking global governance and religious-political unity. Odle cites papal calls for international authority as evidence for his interpretation, while these modern connections remain the speaker’s prophetic claims.
The red horse removes peace and brings widespread killing. Odle relates it to revolutionary violence and war, presenting organized bloodshed as the next force released within the prophetic sequence.
The black horse carries balances and announces costly wheat and barley, which Odle interprets as scarcity, inflation, and controlled access to necessities. He says economic distress will make populations more vulnerable to centralized rule.
The fourth rider, whose color Odle emphasizes as pale green, is followed by Death and Hell and receives power through sword, hunger, pestilence, and beasts. He associates the imagery with Islam and mass death, an identification presented as his interpretation.
At the fifth seal, slain believers cry for justice beneath the altar and are told to wait for additional martyrs. Odle uses the scene to argue that end-time persecution precedes resurrection and that faithful witness may require death.
The sixth seal brings a great earthquake, a darkened sun, a bloodlike moon, falling stars, and a sky rolled back. Odle compares these signs with Jesus’ Olivet teaching and treats them as literal cosmic upheaval near the end of tribulation.
Kings and ordinary people hide from the face of the Lamb because the great day of wrath has arrived. Odle argues that the visible terror and cosmic signs identify the public return of Jesus rather than a secret pre-tribulation removal.
Revelation pauses before the seventh seal to describe the sealing of 144,000 from Israel. Odle treats this as a parenthetical protection scene, not a continuation of the horsemen, and prepares the class for the next judgment cycle.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:11
All right, good morning, everyone. We welcome our Iron Grace School of Ministry students this morning, those of you here, those out there watching, those who will watch. This is our eschatology class, and today we're gonna look at the seven seals of Revelation. I know last week I had you watch the video from Skyfall, the seven trumpets, so I know we kinda jumped ahead, but that's okay because they're kind of their own story. Each tells the story of the end times, all ending at the same time, but not all starting at the same time. So we're gonna look at the seven seals of Revelation this morning, and of course I've added some. So if you have seen in the past, I think our conference from 2012, End Times Revealed, I did do the seals and trumpets together. I have also, well, I guess in recent years, I've repeated it a couple of times for different audiences, but again, this is for the school, and it does have some updated information. So pay close attention, take notes. You will be tested on this information. So let's get into this right here. The book of Revelation contains, among other things, not just these three things, but it contains the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials of wrath. And actually, I think we've already had class, had you guys watch the post-tribulation rapture and the vials of wrath. We may touch on that again, but today we're getting into the seals and really just kind of repeating and re-establishing the key to understanding the book of Revelation, all right? So you have those right there. Now, here's the timeline that we put together. Nancy made this for me, but this right here kind of helps you to understand. What we believe here, what I believe, what our church ministry believes we teach, is that you have the seven seals, and as we'll see today, when you get to the sixth seal, the sun goes dark, the stars fall, and that is the second coming of Jesus Christ, the wrath of the lamp. That right there in itself shows that it's not the traditional view that we've been taught by so many churches and ministry schools and prophecy teachers that you have the seven seals, then you have the seven trumpets, then you have the seven vials. That's what we've been taught, but that's not what the Bible says. This is not Pastor Dean's opinion because the Bible says that the seven seals, that this is the end. How do we know it's the end? And I'll show you, we'll get to this in a minute, but we're gonna go full circle here. But the six seals, as the sun goes dark, the moon does not give its light, the stars fall from heaven, the powers of heaven are shaken. That's the firmament that it says we see
- 0:03:15
the tribes of the earth and all of them, the rich men, the captains, so forth, they're gonna see the son of man coming in the clouds. This coincides, the sixth seal is Matthew 24, 29 through 31. This is the same event, where every mountain is moved, every island is moved. So if the sixth seal is the end and the second coming of Jesus, how do we have seven trumpets after that? How do we have the seven vials after that? It's impossibility, it's not logical, does it make sense? But what does make sense? What makes sense is that these different, the seals, the trumpets, the vials of wrath, they don't start at the same time. They're not the same length of time as they're developing, but they all end at the same time. That's very important to understand. So the seals are the long story leading up to the second coming of Jesus Christ. The trumpets are the shorter story, a little bit shorter, but still longer than the vials. The vials are the shortest story, but still ending at the second coming. They all end at the second coming of Jesus Christ. And when you understand this and you read the book of Revelation, it will make sense to you that you're reading three different stories of things that are gonna happen, like three different accounts leading up to the same event, the end, Armageddon, the wrath of God, the wrath of the lamb, the second coming of Jesus, they all end there. Now the only one of these, and this is very important truth to understand, out of the seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials of wrath, the only set of these in which we're told a timeframe in which they happen, where we're actually given the exact timeframe when they have to happen is the seven vials of wrath. We are told that they start, what, with sores on men who have the mark of the beast. Well, the mark of the beast is not instituted until the middle, sometime around the middle of the tribulation, the seven year tribulation period. So we know that the vials of wrath happen in the last three and a half years. But as for the trumpets, we are not told when they start in the Bible. We are told when they finish. We are not told when the seals start and when they finish. So anything, if you try to say the seals happen when the seven years start, that is an assumption. That is really just based on the traditions and doctrines of men. It's not based on the Bible. You cannot show me a verse that says that the seven seals of revelation start in the last seven years or when the last seven years begin. Any teaching that says that is simply man's opinion. It's simply an assumption because the Bible does not say when the seals started to be open.
- 0:06:15
They do say when they come to full fruition and manifestation and when they end, but they don't say when they start. That is so very important. Too many times we create doctrines based on assumptions and not what the Bible actually says. We just say, oh, here's what we think and then it gets taught. It goes from this is what I think to this is the way it is as these doctrines get passed down, okay? And that's something, I mean, I was taught that way and I had to break free from that mindset because I had heard it so much from everybody around me when I was a young man starting out in the ministry. So this is our timeline here. I think it's pretty accurate and pretty helpful. All of you out there, students and our ministers to be, you're welcome to use it if you like. Now, let's look at this. I love this verse, these two verses here because this is a principle about the end because a lot of people say, well, Pastor Dean, how do you know or why do you think that you have the correct interpretation of this? Well, I believe it because number one, I think that I spent a lot of time studying this. This has actually been end time Bible prophecy in the book of Revelation and Daniel and so forth. Matthew 24 has been something that I've really studied a lot in depth for the last 32 years. So I think I have a pretty good grip. I've heard just about every teaching there is on it from the pre-trib view to the pre-wrath view to I've heard everything. And I didn't jump on one particular thing. I just kept over the years, I just kept growing and learning. But I think the Bible is very clear that number one, it's the glory of God. This is Proverbs 25, too. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but is the honor of Kings to search out the matter. According to Revelation chapter one, we are Kings and priests through the blood of Jesus now. We're born again, we're Kings and priests. So God likes to conceal things in his word until, and then he has a point where he begins to reveal them. All right, now particularly concerning end time Bible prophecy, Daniel 12.9, he told Daniel, and Daniel is the Revelation, the book of Revelation for the Old Testament. He says here that he told Daniel and said, go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end, or until the time of the end. Now, what does that mean? There's gonna come a point in the end times when these things are happening and beginning to happen that these things are going to be unsealed, meaning they're not gonna be hidden from our view, our understanding, or our ability to interpret them anymore, okay? Again, this is not my opinion.
- 0:09:16
This is what the Bible says. So we had reached a point where God had concealed these things in mystery and symbolic language, and that he would reveal what those things were, that it would become, basically it would become to those who were studying, praying, seeking God, Kings and priests of the Lord through the blood of Jesus, it would become obvious what these things are. Number one, by comparing scripture with scripture, letting scripture interpret scripture, and then looking at what was happening in the world, and did we see anything that had the identifying marks of this? Now, for anybody, if anybody at this point in the end times scenario where we are says that you can't understand these things, no, they should rephrase that. They don't understand. Not we can anymore, all right? But it's just they don't. So let's keep going here. Of course, we start out with Revelation five, and it says that there's this scroll that's sealed with seven seals, and that no one was found worthy in heaven, or in earth, or under the earth to open the seals. No man found worthy, but the lamb was worthy. Who is the lamb? The Lord Jesus. He's the only one worthy to open this book, to unseal it, to begin to crack it open, right? By removing the seals. Well, that's what this is all about. The seals begin to show us what's gonna transpire in the last days. Now, let's remember something that Paul and Peter and James and John, all of them called, even in the first century, the beginning of the last days. Now, to us, that sounds strange because we're so geared toward our natural understanding, but the Bible says a thousand years as a day with the Lord and a days as a thousand years. So as the Holy Spirit was speaking through them, it was like this, the last days have begun. Now, what I believe is that what he was talking about is the things, the spirits, the evil spirits and their plan, Satan's plan started very early on and that it would take time for it to unfold, all right? But we are there. So let's look at this because we're gonna look at the four horsemen first. The first four seals are called four horsemen of the apocalypse. That's just a phrase for them. You have in the four horsemen, you have a white horse, a red horse, a black horse. King James calls the pale horses. We're gonna see that the word is really green, but basically you have four horses of different colors. Now, how do we interpret what these things are? Well, we compare scripture with scripture. So here's the scripture we're gonna compare it with. This is a vision of Zechariah, Zechariah six, one through five.
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