Revelation 8:1 When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
Many people are uncomfortable with silence. Just notice the strange thing that happens in a room when near silence happens. Everyone starts to look around to see what is going on in the room to cause the silence. Once the search has happened, then the conversations begin again.
Silence when we are alone can also be uncomfortable for many people. They must have music, or the TV blaring in the background. For some reason, silence signals something that makes these people uncomfortable.
I never have silence. I have tinnitus, ringing in the ears. So the best I can do is have ringing, an annoying, high pitched ringing. When there is other sound, the ringing is less noticeable, so that helps.
There are very few times in the Scriptures when there is silence that is noted in the text. There are few passages that speak about the silence of an enemy following a defeat. There is also silence after judgment has been carried out. But this is the only place where silence happens in heaven.
Heaven is normally a fairly sound enriched environment. As we have read in previous chapters, there are heavenly beings who provide songs of worship and adoration before God’s throne. Their music filling the atmosphere, and no one seems to mind the sound. There are the prayers of God’s people that resonate there.
In the verses that precede our passage for today, there have been a series of sounds, everything from a thundering voice to marketplace hawking for a sale “Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages….” There have been despairing cries of those who are waiting for justice, “How long, Sovereign Lord….”
And then there is silence!
And the silence lasts half an hour!
There are some ideas about this silence and why it happens, but the explanation isn’t in the text. There was silence. That is what we are told.
So what do we do when we get silence when we listen in on heaven’s conversation? Perhaps, we have a need, and all we get is silence when we present it before God’s throne. Our prayer goes unanswered, neither a “No” or a “Yes” is heard. Silence!
What do we do when someone who is close to us give us the silent treatment, the cold shoulder, the empty email box? We reach out, but nothing comes back our direction.
Does the LORD give us the cold shoulder, the silent treatment in our passage? What I find interesting is that the verses that immediately follow our verse are about the prayers of God’s people permeating heaven like intense. Our prayers matter; they are heard.
And after our prayers have been offered as incense before the LORD, these same incense carriers are again filled with fire and hurled down to earth at the start of a series of judgments upon the earth’s inhabitants. What had been a vehicle for they symbolic delivery of our prayers before the throne of God, that same vehicle has become the opening volley in judgment on the earth.
I wonder if the silence wasn’t a pause before judgment. It is as though the LORD and the inhabitants of heaven all took a deep breath, knowing what we about to happen. There have already been announced judgments, but nothing quite like what is written about in this chapter and the next.
Silence.
The Arnold Journey 