What Did the Seven Thunders Say?

When we wish the Bible had just a little more information

In the middle of Revelation, a book full of bizarre, confusing, and grotesque imagery there is a uniquely strange moment. It happens at the beginning of chapter 10, and this is what John says:

Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” Revelation 10:1-4 ESV

I say this moment is “uniquely strange” because Revelation is a book in which God reveals his plans for the culmination of history. Indeed, the very word “revelation” suggests a sudden revealing or understanding. Yet here in chapter 10 John tells us that when he went to write down what these thunders spoke, he was prevented from doing so. Two questions occur to me. First, why was he stopped from recording what the thunders said? At the beginning of the book, in 1:19, John is explicitly told to write down the vision he is about to see. It’s odd that God would reveal something to him that he was prohibited from sharing as part of the vision.

I’ve read various explanations of this, most of which make sense but none of which are satisfactory. It may be that the sealing of these words is meant to emphasize the extraordinary nature of God’s judgments. In the midst of the incredible events John is seeing, there are still some things that we are not meant to know. It’s sort of like God is saying, “I’m going to tell you everything” and then at one point, he says “Actually, you can’t know this part.” Our natural reaction is, “Oh wow, I can’t even imagine what he ISN’T telling us.”

The second question, though, is: Why bother telling us about the thunders at all? If John was prohibited from sharing what the thunders said, why mention them in the first place? Well, the literary device mentioned above is one reason, I suppose. I also wonder John’s perspective was, “I need to share everything, even if I don’t understand what I’m seeing, or why I’m seeing it.” That would make sense of his decision to include hearing the thunders, but being prevented from sharing what they said.

Ok, but how does any of that help us?

About 25 years ago, Dad and I traveled to Indiana to check out a potential college for me. We arrived at the hotel very late and as the bleary-eyed kid at the front desk looked up our room, he said something like, “It looks like we gave that room to somebody else.” Dad was not thrilled, I think he said, “Why did I give you my credit card to hold the room then?” But then, almost immediately the other guy said, “But we do have another room available.” There was a moment of silence as Dad and I had the same thought: “Why did you even bring up the first thing?”

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Do you ever have “God, why did you even bring this up” moments when you read the Bible? The seven thunders is one, and another might be from John 8, which we touched on last week. When the woman caught in adultery is brought to Jesus, as the religious leaders yell at him to say what the Law says to do, he stoops down and quietly scribbles in the dirt.

What was he writing? As with the seven thunders, various explanations have been offered. Maybe he was writing their sins, or maybe he was writing down the actual words of the Law, or maybe he was scribbling nonsense just to confuse or distract them. I think the real answer, though, is: It doesn't matter. If we needed to know what he was writing, the author would have told us.

I wonder whether you’ve ever considered that actually the Bible is full of things like this. Why did God want us to know, for example, the names of Esau’s firstborn’s five sons? (Genesis 36:11) Or what about the many figures of speech in Ecclesiastes that, because they are ancient, we aren’t quite sure what they mean? “When the grasshopper is a burden”? (Ecc. 12:5) What? There are many things in the Bible that don’t translate into the 21st century, and what does God want us to do with them?

Of course, God is God and I am not. If I don’t understand why he did something, the proper response is not, “That was a mistake” but “WHY did he decide to do that? What am I not seeing?”

In my experience, many people assume that if the Bible was given to us to grow in our faith, then we should be able to understand everything in it. I believe that God intends for us to read the Bible, that it really has been given to us to grow in our faith. But that doesn’t mean it’s a step-by-step instruction manual. Some things are going to remain mysterious and strange. What did the seven thunders say? We will never know. And that’s ok, even if the only reason it’s in the Bible is that John really, really wanted us to know about an extra weird thing that happened to him during his vision.

Just because we can’t understand something doesn’t mean it is without value. We are responsible for the level of understanding with which we have been entrusted. We understand more about the Bible than we did 1,000 years ago, or 500, or even 5, but we’ll never understand everything. And even the things we do understand aren’t always easily applicable to our lives. That’s ok. Perhaps all God wants of us, when it comes to the things we don’t understand, is to preserve them for the generation to whom he will reveal them. That, after all, is what he asked of John when he gave him his revelation.