Janet Weaver Smith © 8-11-2015 gardenministries.org
Revelation 10 Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. 2 He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. 4 And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.” …
8 Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more: “Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” 9 So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.'” 10 I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. 11 Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.”
Ezekiel 3:1 And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” 2 So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.
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What is this scroll or open book? What are the 7 Thunders and why did they need to be “sealed up†and remain undisclosed until the end of the age? I propose that the 7 Thunders are bridal in nature and thus, their intimate nature, and what they impart are sealed up in this book until the bride is ready to receive them. I propose that this 7 Thunders revelation begins to happen when the Revelation 8:1 7th seal is opened. The Apostle John is a bride-type. As such, he is the one who took the now open book that was sealed, which means that both he and the end-time bride of Christ are ready to receive what the 7 Thunders are about to declare and impart. These impartations release the necessary changes for the bride to carry out her Romans 8:19 calling of manifest sonship and her 2-witnesses-empowered assignments in the earth. This ready bride can receive the release of the 7 Thunders because the Holy Spirit has made her ready for Jesus. Empowered by the impartations that the 7 Thunders release, as Jesus’ own agent of change, the Christ-filled bride can now release on earth in the prayer room what is ignited in heaven on the golden altar of incense and prayer.
Prior to this release, it is no surprise that many in the body of Christ have experienced an unprecedented and extraordinarily long, extremely hard, faith building, death-to-self, alive-to-Christ process. The groaning nature of a birthing bride has culminated to its peaking point. Those who have said “Yes!†to Jesus as His cleansing Word sanctifies them through and through, they are crying out in pain as He prepares them for birth and for that change when they become fully conformed into His likeness and ready to receive His fullness of love poured out. They are passing through the last layers of the veil of Satan’s religious spirit that has separated earth and heaven all this time. The jezebelic religious spirit is Satan’s attempt to counterfeit God’s Holy Spirit, holding to a form of “godliness” but denying the power of transformation that only the Holy Spirit can deliver. As the church repents of her double-minded tares and puts off the religious spirit within her in favor of believing and obeying the entirety of God’s Word, the bride emerges clean and pure, unstained by the world. The confrontation of the ages has come to an all-time-high head and the final squeeze before the push is upon us. Some people are even feeling spinning and nausea as they spiritually pass through this last layer of the veil.
This extreme process points toward an unprecedented event that is about to happen that will be epic in nature and of which the 7 Thunders will likely be released to a ready bride. To prophetically symbolize the process, both the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel and the New Testament Apostle John were both instructed to eat a scroll that contained the living, active Word of God which was sweet to the taste and for John, sweet but also bitter in his belly. John experienced the future Laodicean-age nausea from the eaten scroll (Revelation 3:16: lukewarm “Christians” who would not receive the love of God’s corrections and rebukes caused God to vomit them out). Both Ezekiel and John were commanded to release the prophetic unction they had eaten when the time was ripe. Ezekiel prophesied in his time and John has prophesied and will again prophesy “in his time.” Later in this article, I disclose how John’s “time” may have a 2,000 (plus or minus) year time span.
This sets a Biblical precedent for a prophetic and apostolic body to be asked to “eat the Word of God” and be ready to prophesy. For those who have “eaten” the Word of God and, like John, are asked to seek and eat the end-time bridal revelation of the Daniel 12 and the Revelation 10 scroll containing the yet-to-be-revealed 7 Thunders understanding, this is the time to enter through the Revelation 4:1 “open door” and access heaven’s unlocked mysteries especially those of the 7 Thunders. All believers in Jesus Christ are invited to seek God in this way. This is the time to seek the Word of God and let it go into us and divide out our soulish, world-entrenched ways of living and bring us into the fullness of a Spirit-led life. It is a struggle but one that is promised a tremendous, historical outcome. The Cloud of Witnesses that have gone before us rejoice over this day and pray for us to enter into this bridal reality and finish our course so that they can finish theirs with us. The fullness of Hebrews 12 and Isaiah 26:2 is at hand. “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.â€
One current minister who has been seeking the 7 Thunders revelation is Paul Keith Davis from WhiteDove Ministries. In a very vulnerable openness, he is boldly releasing his prophetic pursuit of this message so that what he gets, others can chew on and see how the Lord owns it (or not) in their own heart. This is an example of the prophetic body of Christ working their “parts and pieces” together in prayer and scriptural grounding to discover together what the whole message is for our times. Paul Keith Davis proposes that the 7 Thunders are likely to be what heaven is listening to as it falls silent for one half hour after the breaking of the 7th seal. (Paul Keith’s message: https://vod.whitedoveministries.org/the-seven-thunders-part-2-paul-keith-davis-august-4-2015/)
It is important not to prematurely conclusively judge something that may still be in the process of becoming a full revelation but is yet in its unfolding and partial stage of revelation. To prematurely stamp as “right or wrong” what may still be in the process of discovery, without letting the fruit of its end point come and reveal its wisdom (or not) is what 1 Thessalonians 5:20-22 warns us not to do; that is “to treat prophecy with contempt.” “Contempt” in Greek: exoutheneó means to: ignore, set to naught, despise.
1 Corinthians 13:10 but when completeness [teleios] comes, what is in part disappears [katargéÅ]. The “completeness” has not yet fully come, but when it does, what is “in part” will fall away. In the meantime, we are in a process of maturing and discovery that will culminate in a Christ-like fullness and a maturity that empowers us to let go of what is partial because we have been filled by the One who has makes us completely whole.
1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child [Greek: népios: unlearned, immature], I talked, thought, and reasoned like a child [immature]. When I became [Greek: ginomai] a man, I put the ways [Greek: katargéÅ] of childhood [immaturity] behind me.
So let us press on to discover the revelation of the 7 Thunders bridal mystery and not be afraid of the challenging process it may entail. Be warned though! Eager false accusers stand at-the-ready with insults and dis-accreditation of character for anyone who may attempt to pass through this open door by seeking the greater revelation of this now-open bride’s book. Self-centered people who say they are Christians but are afraid of experiencing the mystical supernatural of God will try to undermine, and even oppress those who believe that God is mystically supernatural in nature and that the revelation of His Word can still unfold into a greater understanding of God’s eternal purposes, i.e., the bridal paradigm.
But who made these unbelieving, I-know-better “believers” our judge? Shall we succumb to the fear-of-man and unbelief grounded in the pride of intellectualism and religion rather than align ourselves with our ever-unfolding and revealing, mystically profound and supernatural God? This is the time to aggressively pursue the revelation that completes our understanding of God so that the fullness of Christ’s love can be poured out into us. Romans 5:3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
All the more, let us seek to know the all-powerful, mighty Spirit of wisdom and revelation and find out more about the Ephesians 5:32 “profound mystery” behind the bridal paradigm of Christ and His church. What is it that has been sealed up and reserved for us who live at the end of ages? We must lay hold of it. We must not be way laid by name-calling insults. They are par for the course. We cannot be put off by our frustrations with our own personal incompleteness either. He who began a good work in us will complete it!
Fixed on the promises of God, we are to look upward, worship God, pray, and regularly get together in fellowship with like-hearted people. For those pressing in for the fullness and the unveiling of knowing Christ and His hidden treasures, we are to both seek and give time for the ripened fruit to become clear before we make definitive conclusions about unfolding revelation that is not contradicting scripture. It is tragic when we shut the creative process down by swooping in with our editorial fear-hats on, slicing and dicing what has not yet been fully formed. It’s best to wait until the baby is born before we start cleaning it up from its bloody, beautiful birth!
Not all revelation has to be established as doctrine and taught in every basic Christianity classroom. Paul said that there were mysteries and concepts that were for the mature that would overwhelm baby Christians (Hebrews 5:11-12). An example of an unfolding revelation that I don’t need to form into a doctrinal teaching would be something like this: I personally believe that the Apostle John did not physically die but was transfigured into a pre-resurrection-body “fullness” that allows him to access both the physical and spiritual realm like Jesus had before he went to the cross. When Jesus’ physical life was threatened, and because His “time had not yet come,” Jesus could disappear into crowds. Thus, when necessary, Jesus manifested a cloak of invisibility. (Luke 4:30, John 8:50 and 10:39, Luke 24:31) I personally believe that the Apostle John is still alive and walks the earth while being fully clothed in his transfigured state and has a “cloak of invisibility” from which he can appear to one person and at the same time no one else around that person can see him. He can also translate to various places around the globe and traverse between heaven and earth as the fullness of the Holy Spirit empowers him.
This is a remarkable ability and will be characteristic of those who become fully matured and transfigured into Christ’s fullness. This is what the remnant overcomer bride can expect to happen to her when the fullness comes to her before she receives her final resurrected body form at Christ’s second coming. Jesus had 3 phases to his bodily changes. Phase 1: transfigured. Phase 2: resurrected from death with an eleven (or more) dimensional body that was able to pass through walls and yet eat physical food. Phase 3: ascended resurrection body and eternally crowned with all dominion, authority, and majesty.
Like Jesus before His ascension and like John as our bride-type, there will be Phase 1 and 2 overcomers walking the earth in their rewards, supernaturally infused with unique abilities. Abilities such as having their youthful vigor completely restored because they are able to eat from the Tree of Life and not die or be killed unless they are led by the Spirit to let themselves be martyred, or the ability to translate from place to place (as the Apostle Philip demonstrated) as the Spirit leads them, or the ability to employ a cloak of invisibility when needed, and best of all, the ability to discern and release the perfect will of Father God in the moment.
And all of this will be experienced before they receive Phase 3 of their final resurrected body changes that happens at Christ’s return when “every eye will see Him” return. One of the benefits of being transfigured is that the tyranny of time, that the spirit of this age subjects people to, will no longer affects that person. Time is no longer painful because the power of its limitations has broken off of the transfigured bride.
The married bride of Jesus lives above the power of time and no longer lives inside of it and subject to time’s limitations. Thus, the Apostle John (who I personally have reason to believe has lived nearly 2,000 years) does not experience long periods of time as painful because, in his eternally transfigured state, the tyranny of time, i.e. aging, and the power of death do not affect him. This will happen to a transfigured, Phase 1 and 2 bride as well.
This same Apostle John, and those transfigured as he has been have yet to fulfill end-time assignments. Revelation 10 tells us that John is yet to prophesy what he heard the 7 Thunders say. When the seal that kept him quiet is opened, he will do just that, and so will the bride! The Revelation of the 7 Thunders will not in any way contradict scriptural truths but will unveil a bigger scope of bridal understanding. John does not act alone. He also represents a company of unshackled lovers of Jesus who will not rest until they are fully known by and who intimately know Jesus.
An example of how the mystery of a “Thunder” can be revealed, executed, and remain completely within the context of scriptural truth could look like this: I propose that one of these bridal thunders, and perhaps the first of the 7, is the declaration of truth that Jesus Christ is LORD of His bridal body and that as such, it is time for the release of the supernatural empowerment of God to fully transform the faithful wise virgin bride into Christ’s own image. Those who stayed faithful to Jesus as He completed His LORDSHIP process in them receive their overcomer reward(s). Perhaps the 7 Thunders are directly related to the 7 churches overcomer rewards.
For example, the church of Thyatira was commanded to repent of sinful compromise by tolerating “jezebel” who taught that sinning was ok. This false doctrine, prevalent in the religious system of today, has “fed” the dark veil of the religious spirit (the tares within us) and is fueled by fear, doubt, and unbelief. Overcomers are commanded to utterly repent of such beliefs and shed all compromise with sin by embracing the cross and the grace of God. From this baptism of repentance, a pure and spotless bride emerges with, in this case, the promise of authority to rule and reign in the intimate knowledge of the Morningstar Himself.
As with all Revelation church age promises, the in-working of the Holy Spirit in the overcomer completely supplants all other “loves” and “gods” in the bridal heart of Christ’s followers.With a fully circumcised heart, the bride of Jesus cries out in union with the Spirit, “COME!” Released by the Father, Jesus, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, impassioned for His bride, does indeed “COME!” and releases His marital benefits to His trusting, submissive bride as His fullness enters her sanctified faith and transforms her into His image. One with Jesus, the bride is now unveiled having become the very transfigured and transformed flesh and bone of His body on earth.
This royal exchange of the LORD Jesus’ bridal declaration of thunder serves as the final thrust that ousts the dragon from middle heaven having been completely purged from it by Michael and his angelic company of warriors. What goes up must push down! The completion of the Phase 1 and 2 bride supplants Satan and a loud voice in heaven says: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.” (Revelation 12:10)