Can someone explain how the seals work? I know that they will be opened during the tribulation but that's all I know. I always get confused when posttribers say that the rapture will happen after the seals but as a prettribber it doesn't make sense to me.
Let's examine the scriptures for our answer. The seals are sealing a book. If you read very carefully, Revelation 5, you will discover that the book is far more important than the seals. It was typical in those days that a king would write a document, seal it with wax and put his ring imprint in the wax, which would tell all who saw it that their life would be in danger if they broke the seal. Perhaps the king would write on the outside of the document (Usually in those days a scroll) if someone else would be authorized to open it.
This is only a guess, for John is silent, but my guess is, this was sealed by the second person of the Godhead, the Redeemer from the Old Covenenant, (see Isa 44:6) in the court room of heaven, and could only be opened by Him after He had left heaven to be born of a man, suffered and died, then rose again, and finally, ascended back into heaven to get the book back into His own hands. I suspect that written on the outside of this book, were words as to who would be worthy to take the book and open the seals. I suspect it had to be a man who would raise from the dead under His own power, and ascended into heaven.
What about the book? John did not write this, but it it certainly to be understood: once all seven seals are opened, then the book is opened, and the first thing written inside the book is the 7 angels receiving their respective trumpets, in preparation for sounding them. The book is opened in Revelation 8:1. If we read ahead, we see that it is at the 7th trumpet that Satan loses his place as god of this world. The kingdoms of the world are taken from him and given to Jesus Christ. Finally, the world will have a righteous leader!
In other words, if no man was every found worthy to take the book and open the seals, Satan would remain the god of this world forever. The seals were affixed to the book, first to prevent the book from being opened except by the Author, our Lord Jesus Christ. Each seal causes it to become LEGAL for what is written to come to pass.
Notice that the first thing Jesus did upon ascending, and entering the throne room, was to get that book from the Father and begin opening the seals. In other words, the first seals were opened around 32 AD, when Jesus ascended.
Look at the first seal. It is a WHITE horse. John used the color white 17 times in Revelation, and every other time to represent righteousness, Godliness, or pureness. We can be SURE John would not use white for anything thing evil. What was the ONLY righteous entity on earth when Jesus ascended? It was the CHURCH. It would have been ILLEGAL for Jesus to send out the church until He opened that first seal!
Seal 1 then, is to represent the CHURCH taking the GOSPEL to the world. (But wait! Satan is the god of this world!)
Seals, 2, 3, and 4 are to represent the devil's attempts to stop the advance of the gospel. God has allowed the devil to use wars, famines, pestilences and wild beasts to try and stop the advance of the gospel, but God has limited him to only one fourth of the earth: probably Europe, the Middle East and Africa. (That is about one fourth.) Because the church took the gospel into the devil's world, MARTYRS would be the results.
Seal 5 is for the martyrs of the church age. They were told that the time of judgment would not come until the last martyr would be killed as they were - as church age martyrs.
Seal 6 begins the Day of the Lord and the start of God's wrath. The pre-trib rapture MUST come before the 6th seal is opened.
Seal 7 begins the time of Jacob's trouble, or the 70th Week of Daniel, or what many today call "the tribulation."
