Revelation 6:12-17

March 8, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 17:50 in the audio file.

Or, None Will Escape the Lamb’s Wrath

One of my greatest concerns with Postmillennialism—I’ll even call it my bias against it, however it was that I came to have such a bias—is that the Postmillennial hope for the future, where the gospel conquers and brings about a golden age in which Christian ethics prosper, while confident and comprehensive, isn’t quite cataclysmic enough to explain Bible language. When Scripture paints a picture of the last days, and of the coming of the day of the Lord in particular, I don’t imagine a calm day on an ocean shore while the artist keeps pushing paint into the corners of the canvas. When Scripture paints, the ocean crashes onto to the easel, thrashes it to pieces, throws it fifty yards in three directions, and all the beach-goers are running for cover that they never make it to. I’m willing to have my bias corrected, but part of my bias comes from a jealousy for the power of the inspired words to hold their own. Chicken Little/Henny Penny was paranoid because of gravity’s pull on an acorn and took it as a sign that the sky was falling, but when the prophets say that the sky vanished like a scroll whose holder lost his grip, that sounds cosmic and cataclysmic. It sounds terrifying. And as John saw his vision, it terrified the most powerful people on earth who ran for their lives like little girls.

For that matter, if the scene of judgment in the sixth seal (6:12-17) begins to answer the cry of the martyred souls under God’s altar in heaven in the fifth seal (6:9-11), then these dramatic, extensive events are a proportional response. The souls gave their lives for the Lamb. They cry to Him for justice, and He comes in such a way that men on earth would rather die than see His face. Now that I think about it, cataclysm itself may still be too calm of a word.

The Lamb has opened five of the seven seals on the scroll through Revelation 6:11. The four horsemen rode out on earth to begin the havoc in verses 1-8, then the fifth seal turned the focus back to the heavenly throne room, as the Lamb heard the voices of the martyrs, and then told them that it wouldn’t be long.

In Revelation 6:12-17 John sees the sixth seal opened, and by order of magnitude the kings and bankers, the movie stars and factory workers, all who had rejected the Lamb, some of whom were even directly responsible for Christian-killing, begin to reckon with the one with whom they have to do.

There are two parts to this paragraph, the creational cataclysm (verses 12-14) and the human fear and flight (verses 15-17) which is both completely understandable and completely futile. None will escape the Lamb’s wrath.

Creational Cataclysm (verses 12-14)

When we’re reading prophetic, poetic, apocalyptic language (which, by the way, all of these genres are meant as different ways to give understanding not to cause confusion), it can be challenging to distinguish the symbols from the substance symbolized. In other words, there is reality behind the representation, and the interpreter’s work is to identify what’s what. The Bible uses metaphors and analogies, so we don’t, for example, expect to see a knob coming out of Jesus’ torso just because He said He was the door (see John 10:7).

As we look at verses 12-14 note that there are numerous similes (comparisons of things using “like” or “as”), but there are not similes explaining similes, or similes within similes. The similes explain in what way the thing that is happening happened. Of the various attempts to symbolize all of these happenings or events, the typical approach is to take the sun and moon and stars as governmental leaders. But then why refer to governmental leaders in verse 15? If there was a transition explanation such as “the stars are the kings,” well, that would be different (as in Revelation 1:20 where the stars are identified as the ang[...]