No, We Are Not in the Seven Seals Yet.Relax and Get Ready!

Over and over, I watch people insist that the headlines in front of them are the prophecies of Revelation coming true. A war breaks out and they call it the red horse. A leader rises or falls and they call it the beast. The conflict in Iran flares and they announce that Armageddon has begun. Every reaction against Donald Trump, every crisis, every shocking news cycle gets pinned to a verse and declared fulfilled.

I have to tell you plainly. None of it is what they think it is.

I have said this before, and I wrote a whole article laying out why the events we are watching are not Armageddon. There are specific things that must happen first, and I walked through several of them there. But I want to go after something deeper here, because the mistake people are making is bigger than a misread headline. It reveals two errors at once. They have the sequence wrong, and they have our present moment wrong.

Start with the sequence. The seven seals are not thousand-year eras we have already lived through. They are events. Sudden, dramatic, unmistakable events. And the whole chain begins with the first seal, the white horse and its rider going forth to conquer.

That first seal has not opened. The First Horseman has not yet ridden.

If the first seal has not opened, nothing after it can have opened either. The red horse of war, the black horse of famine and economic collapse, the pale horse of death and plague, the martyrs crying out under the altar. None of these can arrive before the seal that triggers them. They fall in order, each one flowing out of the one before it. People who tell you we are somewhere in the middle of that chain have skipped the beginning.

This is where nearly everyone gets turned around. So many are convinced we must already be in the seventh seal. That idea comes from reading the seven seals as seven thousand-year periods and assuming we have arrived at the last one. But the seals were never time periods. They are events, and not one of them has opened. What we are waiting for is the first seal, the moment the First Horseman rides. I have laid out the full case in The Seven Seals of Revelation, and you can download a free e-book on the whole subject from my newsletter page. For this article, one thing is enough. The seals are still ahead of us, and the first has not yet broken.

There is a second error too, and almost nobody catches it. It is a misreading of where we actually stand right now.

We are living in good times. I know that sounds strange to say in a world full of trouble, but measure it against Revelation. In America there is no war on our soil. There is no famine emptying our stores. There is no plague killing on the scale John described. Nobody is being beheaded for their testimony the way the fifth-seal martyrs are. When I ask people who claim we are inside the seals to point to these things, they cannot. Because these things have not happened.

The conflict in Iran is the latest example. People watch it and announce that this is the prelude to Armageddon. It is not. Armageddon is a far larger and more terrible battle than most people have any idea of. I wrote an entire chapter in my book on Revelation 9, and what I came to understand about that battle changed the way I see the Second Coming entirely. I have not read anything like it anywhere else. If you want to know what is really coming, that chapter is waiting for you.

Here is what troubles me most. There are people who live for this. They chase every report, every video, every chart that straps Daniel's twelve hundred and sixty days or twelve hundred and ninety days onto the calendar. Each new video announces that this event is the fulfillment of that prophecy. They read their scriptures looking only for the catastrophe. And in all that searching, they miss the one thing that matters.

The Book of Mormon has a name for this.

Jacob 4:14 "But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble."

The mark is Christ. When we spend our energy staring at the horizon for the next disaster, we are looking beyond Him. We go blind to what is right in front of us.

Why do people cling so hard to the idea that we are already in the seals? Because the alternative is harder for them to face. If the seals have not opened, that means all of it is still ahead of us. And it is. I understand why someone would rather believe the worst is mostly behind us. I do not blame them. But wanting it does not make it true, and the wanting is doing them real harm.

Think of a string on an instrument. Wind it tight and it holds a clear tone. But keep it wound to the breaking point, day after day, and it loses that tone. Eventually it snaps. That is what I see happening to these people. They are wound tight all the time, bracing for an end that has not come, burning through their strength on events that have not happened. And when the real thing finally does arrive, they will have nothing left. The string will break at the very moment they need it to hold.

I do not want that for you.

So the answer is to loosen the string. To turn from the horizon and look again at the work right in front of us. There is more than enough of it.

Yes, there is temporal preparation. The food and water and fuel, the things we have been counseled to do for generations. That part is real. But it is the smaller part. The greater work is the work on the heart, and that work is getting ready for the law of consecration.

Much of it begins with getting out of debt, because none of us can consecrate what the bank still owns.

Then there is the harder truth. Many of us have already made this covenant. We stood in the temple and we promised. And we are not living it. A covenant we have made and broken cannot save us. It stands against us until we return to it. That is not a comfortable thing to write, but it is true, and I would rather be honest than flatter anyone.

D&C 105:5 "And Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself."

There are very few people ready for Zion right now. I will be honest with you. I am not ready. I am working my heart out trying to get there. This is not a message I preach down at you from some finished place. It is the work I am doing on myself, and I would be glad for the company.

When will everything change? I do not know. I will not give you a date. I have watched too many people set dates, and I will not add my name to that list. All I am watching for is one thing. The healing of God's servant, Donald Trump. That is what opens the first seal. That is what begins the sequence. When it happens, we will know exactly where we stand.

But the time to get ready is now, before that day, not after it. Once the first seal opens, events will move faster than anyone is prepared for.

So here is the whole message in a sentence. Relax, and get ready.

Not the relaxing of the careless person who assumes nothing is coming. The steadiness of the prepared person who knows exactly what is coming and has quietly made himself ready for it. The energy we pour into scanning the news for the end of the world is energy taken from our covenants, our homes, our debts, and our own hearts. That is where it belongs.

Let me answer the objection before someone raises it. A reader will look at all this and say I am the servant in the parable who tells himself, "My lord delayeth his coming," or the voice Nephi warned about that lulls people into carnal security until they say, "All is well in Zion." I am saying the exact opposite. The evil servant relaxes because he thinks he has time to waste, so he begins to "eat and drink with the drunken" while his master is away. The carnal-security crowd cries "all is well" so they can go back to sleep. I am telling you that all is not well, that most of us have broken the covenant we made, that the day is certain and it is close, and that the only safe response is to stop wasting our strength and start preparing in earnest. Nephi did not pronounce a woe on the one who prepares. He said, "wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion." I am asking you to be anything but at ease.

D&C 87:8 "Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen."

Zion is built where we are, in the time we still have, while the days are good and the work is calm. Then whatever comes, and it will come, we are standing in a holy place. We will not be moved. And we will not break.