There are a couple of additional points about the throne of God in Revelation 4 that we should consider. As we touched on before, we see many different beings in the heavenly or spiritual realm in Scripture. One point to consider is that Satan was only able to draw a third of the angels to follow him in rebellion. Some think that because a third of the angels fell and two-thirds did not that the good outnumbers the bad two to one. This is far from the case.
Angels are the spiritual beings we are most familiar with because they are the primary messenger beings we interact with, but there are many other types of spiritual beings. None of the other spiritual beings fell, and so the good in the spiritual realm outnumber the bad by an incalculable number. But it is not really about numbers. If all but God had fallen, His goodness would still far outweigh all of the fallen.
Some ancients believed that when the Lord taught that He was the Good Shepherd that would leave the ninety-nine to go after the one, He was speaking of how He left the other worlds He created to go after the one in rebellion—the earth. When Satan fell he was cast down to the earth, and all of the evil and rebellion in creation, both natural and spiritual, are here on the earth. So the rest of creation remains obedient and in harmony with God, except this speck of dust in the universe called earth.
That God did not destroy this tiny speck that had fallen, but rather sent His Son for our redemption, reconciliation, and restoration will forever be one of the greatest manifestations of His nature. This will be celebrated forever throughout the natural and spiritual creation. This also reveals an important truth—size may have little to do with importance.
Even in the natural creation, the earth is hardly a speck of dust in comparison to the universe. Yet it now has infinite value because the Son came to live on earth as a man and redeemed it with His sacrifice. If that were not enough to make the earth possibly the most important location in the creation, God the Father Himself will come to the earth to live among men. For this reason, we should never consider anyone or anything insignificant because it is small or weak.
Although it may be interesting to consider if there are other occupied worlds, this is not clear in Scripture and we cannot make a doctrine out of it. But what about what many consider to be “proof” of alien visitations or UFOs? I submit that they are not visitors from other planets but are spiritual beings, such as “Ezekiel’s wheels” that do manifest in the natural from time to time. I bring this up because this can be a major diversion from our course.
I did a study in the1970s to track when most of the UFO sightings took place. It was noteworthy that most of them happened around significant events on earth, such as the beginning of revivals, other significant moves of God, or important events with the nation of Israel. These are not aliens from other planets. These are spiritual beings from both the good and bad side that for some reason tend to become visible to more people during times of important events on earth. Some experiences that people claim to have had about being kidnapped by aliens may seem to be real, and they may have been to a degree, but they were dealing with demonic entities, not aliens.
This kind of thing will increase in frequency as this age comes to a close. There are some things in Revelation that might be considered comparable to the aliens people claim to see, but we must not be distracted by this. If anything like this happens to you, take authority over it in the name of Jesus.
Another point about the “seven spirits of God” in this chapter: The most dominant number in Revelation is seven. We’ve studied the Seven Churches, and we will see several other sevens in this vision. Seven is well established as the number of “completeness” in Scripture, beginning with the seven days of the week. A key to understanding this book is that all of the sevens are related. They speak of the same events and/or periods of time, but from different perspectives. They must be fitted together to get the complete message, as we will see.