The Sixth Seal: Fall on us
Notes
Transcript
What is the purpose of the sixth seal? What is the message? The tearing of the sixth seal describes such a complete a final end of the world, its placement in Revelation predicts the end and the beginning of God’s Judgement.
Remember The Four Views of Revelation: Eschatological, Theological, Devotional and Biblical.
Let’s look at the Sixth Seal from all four views:
Eschatological: The scenes refer to the day of the Lord: apocalyptic judgments. ()
I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
Theological: These natural disasters are all acts of God and serve as the prelude to the Coming of Christ ()
“But in those days, following that distress, “ ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
Devotional: The people running to the rocks and mountains are not the righteous (the Church), they are the rest of the world’s population who hide from God and the wrath of the Lamb. This is clearly the judgment upon evil and not the righteous. the following chapter refers to God protection of the righteous. ()
Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”
In addition: Revelation was to be read in public worship from beginning to end.
The judgments, prophecies are descriptive of the feelings and sentiments of the saints who were suffering at the time of John’s writing. Those saints looked for the end when God would execute the final judgments of the world system and arrival the new kingdom of God- the eternal kingdom of God in Christ. ()*
Biblical: These terrible events lead to the earth’s moral and spiritual correction. God would lead people to repent, but they will not listen. Thus, God’s wrath, (the first time The Lamb’s wrath is mentioned) will come upon the whole earth. (). In addition: These events are metaphorical as we as literal.
The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled), for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty, and all the oaks of Bashan, for all the towering mountains and all the high hills, for every lofty tower and every fortified wall, for every trading ship and every stately vessel. The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day, and the idols will totally disappear. People will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth. In that day people will throw away to the moles and bats their idols of silver and idols of gold, which they made to worship. They will flee to caverns in the rocks and to the overhanging crags from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth.
John could be referencing The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. “The 79 AD eruption is one of the most well-known ancient eruptions in the world, and may have killed more than 16,000 people. Ash, mud and rocks from this eruption buried the cities of Pompeii.” (source “Black as sackcloth made of goat’s hair could describe the black ash of this eruption. John could have used it to emphasize God’s wrath upon the world.
The rich and poor hid in caves. This puts the revelation in a specific setting. This could not be the whole world.
People hiding from the terror of the Lord is reminiscent of when God shook the mountains of Sinai. The Israelites feared and begged Moses to speak to them from now on ()