THE SEVEN SPIRITS OF GOD — a phrase unique to Revelation, occurring four times (1:4, 3:1, 4:5, 5:6) and never explained. ⚠ It opens the book's own greeting, standing in a Trinity-shaped list between 'him who is and was and is to come' and Jesus Christ (1:4); it names something the risen Christ himself holds and sends out (3:1, 5:6, 'sent out into all the earth'); and here it is seven flames burning before the throne (4:5). The leading reading takes it as a symbolic description of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of his sevenfold activity (drawing on Isaiah 11:2's list of the Spirit's gifts), rather than seven separate beings — but the phrase itself never says so, and the library reports the reading rather than supplying it as the text's own words. → first discussed at Rev 4:5