NOTES for Rev 7:13-8:6
In speaking about the end of the world, the apostle John uses the same words as the great prophets and teachers of the Old Testament. The seven angels, of whom the book of Tobit speaks, stand before God's throne and serve the One; the seven plagues call to mind the plagues of Egypt. Yet amid horror and catastrophe, the prayers of the saints rise like incense, and, as a refrain echoing the book of the prophet Isaiah, the apostle describes what the world looks like once freed from the power of death and sin: no evil can touch those who come to the Lamb. No suffering will have power over them and no darkness will be able to swallow them, because beside them will be the One who conquered death and the One who is Light, in whom there is no darkness at all.