Discovering the New Covenant by Greg Taylor - exAdventist Outreach

THE SABBATH IN REVELATION
Seal of God. In deciphering the meaning of Revelation, I
needed to do so from a New Covenant perspective rather
than the Old. It soon became clear that the Seal of God in
the New Testament is not the Sabbath at all. In fact, the
New Testament Scriptures are clear. The Seal of God is the
Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 1 we read,
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of
truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also,
having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit
of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until the redemption of the purchased possession, to
the praise of His glory. Eph 1:13-14
Ephesians 4:30-32 restates it this way:
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom
you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all
bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be
put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one
another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as
God in Christ forgave you.
2 Corinthians 1:20-22 uses the same imagery:
For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in
Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He
who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed
us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the
Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
To ignore these clear statements is to ignore what the
New Testament plainly teaches. Revelation must be
interpreted from the perspective of the Cross and the New
Covenant. To insist on the Old Covenant definitions is to
do injustice to the text.
97