Have you ever heard the thunder speak, as in, actual, understandable words? The Apostle John did. We know this because he wrote about it:
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. 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, and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. 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” (Revelation 10:1-4).
The angel John is seeing is a divine herald, revealing to the world what God is about to do. This herald, or another one like him, appeared centuries earlier to Daniel:
On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris, I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude (Daniel 10:4-6).
Although the two passages don’t use exactly the same words, the descriptions are close enough to make it clear that John’s vision is related to Daniel’s. And earlier in Revelation, John himself saw Jesus appear in the same form, as a divine herald:
I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance (Revelation 1:12-16).
But it’s not John’s vision of the herald that I actually want to look at in this article, but rather the voice of the seven thunders that he heard. And at the words that he was told not to reveal.
What I find interesting here is that this whole situation is deliberate. John didn’t just accidentally overhear something that was supposed to be secret; nothing of what he saw or heard was accidental. It was all part of a message that had been deliberately crafted for him to see and hear, and then to reveal to the rest of the church (Revelation 1:1). In other words, John only heard the thunders speaking because the Holy Spirit wanted him to hear them. And the Spirit could just as easily have told him not to write anything about the thunders at all, if that had been his desire. But he wanted the believers of that era, and eventually the rest of us as well, to know that something had been said, and that those words were being deliberately kept secret.
Common sense should tell us that God can’t reveal everything he knows, because we are finite creatures, and our capacity to know and remember is far too small to contain it all. A choice of what to reveal and what to keep back is simply a necessity. That’s not what’s going on here, though. In this passage in Revelation, we’re being told about a specific piece of information that is being withheld for reasons that are not clear.
And when I consider this, what immediately comes to my mind is that the Holy Spirit wants to remind John’s readers, including us, that this book is not the complete unveiling of God’s plans, or of the fulfillment of his promises. Part of what he has planned is being kept hidden until some future time, although there is, I think, an implication that what the thunders said will be revealed some day. Otherwise, why mention it at all? But not yet.
Revelation pulls back the curtain to reveal what is going on in heaven, but not completely. We must not get the idea that if we can just solve the puzzle, this book, or the Bible more generally, will give us the full picture. The Scriptures are not a puzzle to figure out, for one thing, but we also need to understand that there is still more, probably a great deal more, that we aren’t going to be told ahead of time. We must simply trust that God knows what he’s doing.
This passage is one illustration of a principle of biblical interpretation that sometimes gets forgotten; if we take seriously the idea that the Bible is God’s word, then we must accept that there is not only a divine reason for everything it says, but also for everything it doesn’t say. Nothing that was left out of Scripture was left out by accident. (Every passage that contradicts, or seems to contradict, another passage of Scripture was put there on purpose too, but that’s a subject for a different article.) As we just saw, the reason might, in some cases, be simply to reinforce our need to trust. In other cases, the purpose might be something different.
When this same Apostle John wrote his gospel, he ended it with:
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written (John 21:25).
I think we can all intuitively understand this; the complete record of any person’s life would be far too much to put into a book. But the selection of what to record was not based on general interest. Just one chapter earlier John had written:
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31).
In other words, John had a point to make with his book. He chose to include those incidents that would support that point, and ignored everything that would be a distraction. This is not something that is unique to John; all good writers do it. And if they are good writers, they do it well. The fact that some incident was part of the life Jesus lived on earth does not necessarily mean that it’s part of the story that the Holy Spirit wanted each of the gospel writers to tell.
What’s true in the gospels is true in the rest of the Bible as well. Information that would distract without adding anything useful was left out. Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to Cain. And to his wife.
Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch (Genesis 4:17).
Cain, you probably recall, was the firstborn child of Adam and Eve. So who was his wife? To the annoyance of many (including myself), the Bible doesn’t say. Some people guess that she was Cain’s younger sister, although it’s not easy to see how that can be possible without accusing God of sin. Some think that God created other people than just Adam and Eve. Some interpret the entire story of Cain and Abel as a parable. And, in humility, we also have to acknowledge that there might be some other possibility that nobody has been clever enough to think of yet. Does it matter which is correct? Clearly it doesn’t matter to the Holy Spirit, who could easily have inspired Moses to include the correct answer, had he chosen to do so.
The very fact that it doesn’t matter is itself interesting. And when I consider this, it occurs to me that any of the four possibilities would lead to other questions that, if explored, would be fascinating enough to distract from the points that God wanted to make by telling us about Cain and Abel in the first place. And that matters because, of course, he didn’t have to include them in the Bible at all. Which means that this is a story we need to pay attention to.
If we read carefully through the account of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16) with the understanding that this isn’t just random stuff that happened, but a revelation from God, there are some significant lessons. First of all, there’s what happened with sin. I mean, Adam and Eve ate one piece of fruit they’d been told not to, and the next thing we hear is that their firstborn son kills his brother out of jealousy. Holy cow! Not only did sin not end with the first couple, but in one generation it grew from childish disobedience to murder. Don’t tell me that God won’t care about a “little” sin. Not if that’s what happens when it starts to spread. To make the point even stronger, the connection between sin and death that God established in Genesis 2:16-17 is reinforced with this story, but in an unexpected way. The very first death we see in Scripture is not of someone paying the penalty for his own sin, but of a man dying as the victim of somebody else’s.
Further, although death was promised as the penalty for sin, this is now the second time that this penalty actually comes in the form of exile; Adam and Eve from the garden (Genesis 3:23) and Cain from his family and his home (Genesis 4:11-12). The “death” that is the penalty for sin, we see, does not mean extinction, but rather separation.
There’s more. Cain’s plea for a reduced sentence:
Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me” (Genesis 4:13-14).
He recognizes the separation, “I will be hidden from your presence,” and his worry is that, away from God and God’s protection, he might run into other people like himself. That is, he’s afraid of others who will follow his example and treat him the way he treated his brother. And, astonishingly, God accepts this argument:
But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him (Genesis 4:15).
The mark seems to have worked, because Cain lived long enough to found, not just a lineage, but a city as well. God showed more mercy toward a murderer than Cain did toward his innocent brother.
Each of these points could easily be expanded into an entire article, or a sermon. And there are most likely others to be found with further reflection. This is actually a very important story. It tells us something about who God is, who we are, and what sin really is. The origin of Cain’s wife, on the other hand, while it would undoubtedly be interesting, is not, in the end, very important. Written into Genesis, it would be a distraction.
The Holy Spirit left a lot of things out of the Scriptures on purpose. Because we know this, we also know that the things that were included are genuinely important. Not just the parts we like, or that are easiest to understand, but all of it.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
And therefore we need to:
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).