A storm is about to break. This is indicated by the next words of the vision: “After this I [the apostle John] saw four angels standing upon the four corners of the earth, holding tight the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow upon the earth or upon the sea or upon any tree. And I saw another angel [a fifth] ascending from the sunrising, having a seal of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying: ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until after we have sealed the slaves of our God in their foreheads.’”​—Rev. 7:1-4.

16. Why is it that the “great crowd,” although not sealed, are not harmed by the windstorm that is let loose in expression of the wrath of the Lamb?

¹⁶ None of the “great crowd” are reported as being sealed with that “seal of the living God,” only the 144,000 “slaves of our God.” Why, then, is it that none of the “great crowd” are harmed by that turbulent twister that results from the release of the “four winds” let loose from the four corners of the earth? Also, how is it that those of the unsealed “great crowd” do not feel the “wrath of the Lamb” after the sealing of the 144,000 is finished? Ah! it is because “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:14) They now accept the benefits of his ransom sacrifice and seek cleansing from their sins by being washed in his sin-atoning blood. For their protection they do not look to deep-rooted imposing institutions of puny men, but look to Jehovah God and his Lamblike Son Jesus Christ. So they gratefully cry out: “Salvation we owe to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.”​—Rev. 7:9, 10.

The foretold “great tribulation” is the world trouble, the final “tribulation” upon this doomed world. It is the symbolic windstorm that was held back by the four angels at the four corners of the earth until the final ones of the 144,000 spiritual Israelites are sealed as the “bought” property of Jehovah God, the untransferable “slaves of our God.”