A brief form for “seal of the living God” in Rev. 7:2 . In vision John saw this seal affixed to the foreheads of 144,000 of “the servants of our God,” 12,000 from each of “the tribes of the children of Israel.” An angel “ascending from the east” with the seal calls upon the “four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, saying, Hurt not the earth . . . till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.” In Rev. 14:1–5 the 144,000 are said to have “the Father’s name written in their foreheads”; evidently the seal of God contains the name of God. The sealed ones are said to be “the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb” ( vs. 3 , 4 ). Rev. 7:15 and 14:3 , 4 both place the 144,000 “before the throne” of God, in His immediate presence; in the former they “serve him day and night in his temple,” and in the latter they “follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” The 144,000 have remained loyal to God through an experience referred to as “great tribulation,” during which they “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” ( Rev. 7:14 ; cf. v. 15 ); in Rev. 14:3 they sing a “new song before the throne,” one that only those who have experienced the great tribulation can learn. Passing through this experience with characters unblemished, they stand “without fault before the throne of God” ( vs. 4 , 5 ).
John’s vision of the sealing ( Rev. 7:1–12 ) is inserted under the sixth seal, which deals with events culminating in the second advent of Christ (see Rev. 6:13–16 ). This implies that the sealing process here described takes place not long before Christ’s coming, and that the “great tribulation” through which the 144,000 pass is the blowing of the four winds mentioned in Rev. 7:1–3 . Mention of the 144,000 in Rev. 14:1–5 (immediately following the crisis described in Rev. 13:13–17 , in which a death decree is issued against those who refuse to worship the image of the beast and to receive his mark in their foreheads) implies that the blowing of the four winds ( Rev. 7:1–3 ), the “great tribulation” ( v. 14 ), and the crisis of Rev. 13:13–17 all refer to the same experience through which they remain loyal to God in the face of death. The seal is affixed to them before the crisis as a certificate of God’s approval. God trusts them, and they trust Him.
Equating the words “sign” and “seal” as used in the Bible, early Seventh-day Adventists noted also that the Sabbath is called a “sign” between God and His people ( Ex. 31:13–18 ; Eze. 20:12 , 20 ) and that the Sabbath commandment contains the three elements of an official seal—the name, title, and jurisdiction of the one whom the seal represents. They found that the fourth command of the Decalogue refers to “the Lord thy God” (name), to Him as Creator (title), and to heaven and earth (His jurisdiction). Acceptance of the Sabbath truth, they concluded, is the reception of God’s seal, and acceptance of a counterfeit is the “mark” of the beast’s authority ( see Mark of the Beast ).
Ellen White identified the seal of God with the Sabbath in November 1848 (Joseph Bates, A Seal of the Living God, pp. 24–26), and Bates wrote his book on the subject in 1849. Also in 1849 Mrs. White wrote that the sealing work was then going forward ( Present Truth 1:21, August 1849). In the next issue (1:25, September 1849) James White cited Eze. 13:5 as evidence that the repairing of the breach in the Sabbath ( Isa. 58:12–13 ) immediately precedes the great battle of the day of the Lord.
“So we see that the mighty work of repairing the breach in the law of God, by teaching and observing the Sabbath, which has been so long trodden down, belongs exactly here, just before the four angels let loose the four winds, that the Israel of God may keep the whole law, and be sealed with the seal of the living God, which will enable them to ‘stand in the battle in the day of the Lord’” ( ibid. ).
He comments further that “the repairing of the breach in the law of God, and the sealing, are one and the same work, just before the day of the Lord.”
In 1850 James White wrote: “God has ever had a test truth, with which to seal his people. . . . But the last sealing truth is the immutable law of Jehovah, of which the Sabbath is the crowning testimony. . . . The Sabbath is the seal, and the Holy Spirit is the sealer” ( Advent Review 1:57, September 1850).
In the Review and Herald for June 24, 1852 (3:31), Benjamin Clark spoke of “the sealing time” as “now,” and said that God’s people would be “sealed forever with the love of the truth.” In a series of three extended articles ( ibid. 3:65, 73, 81, Sept. 2, 16, 30, 1852) Hiram Edson associated the seal with the fourth commandment, declared that the law is sealed in the hearts of the Lord’s people ( Isa. 8:16 ), and said, “The Sabbath then is the SIGN or seal of the living God.” His argument rests on the fact that the fourth commandment contains the elements of a royal seal. He also contrasts the seal of God with the mark of the beast, and points to the change in the law of God by the Papacy as a sign of its authority that even Protestants recognize. Roswell F. Cottrell wrote ( ibid. 7:44, Sept. 18, 1855): “The last message before the time of trouble is the sealing message.” Uriah Smith ( ibid. 8:12, 20, Apr. 24 and May 1, 1856) identified the sealing angel of Rev. 7 with the third angel of Rev. 14 , and assigned the sealing work to “our own day.” He too acknowledges the Sabbath commandment as containing the seal of God, because it sets forth the distinguishing characteristics between the true God and all false gods. He speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the sealer,” and associates the sealing of Rev. 7 with the affixing of the mark in Eze. 9 . Cottrell ( ibid. 14:77, July 28, 1859) equates the words “sign” and “seal,” and speaks of the sealing work as the last work to be done for God’s people in their probationary state. The changed Sabbath, he says, becomes the mark of the beast. Ellen White wrote extensively about the seal of God and its importance for the church today. See SDACom 7:968–970; 5T 207–216; TM 444–446; etc. Reference to the seal appears often in Early Writings, which contains her early works (see pp. 38, 43, 44, 48, 50, 58, 67, 71, 89, 279).
Seventh-day Adventists today still consider the sealing work to be most important, but stress also the seal as God’s acknowledgment that His own righteous character is reflected in His children on earth.