Revelation 6:12-17 – 2024 Aug 29

Tonight’s study is where all pre- and mid-tribulation rapture believers meet. As with any congregation of believers in a church, we have a few of both here this evening, and that’s okay. What must be said is that no one knows the day or the hour of the event. Only the “post-tribbers” are left here, and I know a couple of those as well, though they are not among our groups. You might be surprised to know that Chris Rosebrough is among them. His teachings are up on his Fighting for the Faith YouTube channel if you are interested in why he thinks along those lines. You’ll have to do a bit of searching to find them, but they are there, I’ve seen them. I am not making fun of that set of beliefs even though I disagree with them, just like I won’t make fun of the mid-trib beliefs. I confess neither of them make sense to me, but I’ll leave it there. There are brothers in all of those camps, as well as the Amil, Post-mil, and Dispy camps, and I respect and love them all.

The main point tonight is what the sixth seal involves as it is opened. By now, we all understand that great cosmic disturbance is on the menu, and it will terrify most people. This is where people will catch on to what is really happening. I think it has been in motion for a while at this point, mid-tribbers will see this as the point at which it all starts, but either way, this is predicted in several places in Scripture. This section of Revelation 6 is where we learn that this is one of the seals, or sets of conditions that must be met, for the Lord to open what we are viewing as the title deed to the universe.

This is a bigger chunk of text than we have been looking at recently, but there is a great deal of information. We will look at it as is our practice here, one phrase at a time and see what it says, discern what that means, and then decide what we must do about it. I broke the text down as follows:

KV16: There Is No Escaping Final Judgment
16: and they *said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
12-14: It all blows up in everybody’s faces
15-17: They all know why this is happening

Let it be understood that we understand this statement at a personal level. We know there is no escaping the final judgment of your soul. This is something all of us know very well. John 3:18 says, “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” I have referred to this for years as our default condition. Man without faith in Christ is condemned already because of original sin and because of all the sins we committed ourselves after we were old enough to know better. We couldn’t help ourselves, and more importantly, we didn’t want to help ourselves. It felt good so we did it, at least for the most part. There is a small subsection of people that are religious legalists that need to follow the rules so much that it becomes their sin, and that is an impossible weight to bear. I would class the Pharisees as a part of that group, and the Apostle Paul in particular before Christ set him free. I was a part of that group when it suited me also, but I could be freer with my sin. I have been an objectifying alcoholic hedonist, from a family of objectifying alcoholic hedonists. They even told me I was a “Christian” because I was born in a “Christian” country. Imagine my shock at the age of 18 when I found out that I wasn’t really a Christian, only a nominal pretender! Beloved, I was guilty, and I found out, and then I knew it. That’s where all these people will find themselves. What they will (mostly?) miss is the proper response to that knowledge.

What is the ONLY solution for sinners? It is to REPENT. That is, we must turn away from the mad career of our sinfulness and acknowledge that any pursuit of any part of it is wrong. At 18, for the first time, I knew and could admit that I was living a life that offended God because of my personal wrongdoing…and I would have been considered a good kid. I was even called a goodie-two-shoes. If someone was doing something really bad, I would be found nowhere near it. (That doesn’t mean I didn’t do it, by the way, I just never got caught by anyone who could or would snitch.) You want an example? Okay, my sister and one of our friends were having a fight with the little bars of soap we used in our motel. I had a bunch of those little bars of soap too, hidden in my treehouse. I had jerry-rigged an elastic band around a couple of nails and was using it as a slingshot to launch those bars at them from a distance. I was pretty accurate too, and because I was out of sight, They thought they were tagging each other, though they knew I was there. Then I saw my dad’s uncle coming up the walkway between the buildings. I was out the trapdoor of my treehouse and off behind the barn to the 26-acre field that was my backyard. I crab-walked through the brush and high grass to the woods on the other side and then sprinted for the highway through the bush. As I got to the highway, I could hear my dad hollering my name. I got the grin out of the way before he could see it and came strolling in shouting back and waving down the driveway from the highway. “Where were you?” “I went for a walk after my homework.” “Alright then.” My sister and our friend never said a word. But I was just as guilty as they were. By age 18, I had done worse things than that, and didn’t even think about it.

At the time of my salvation, I turned away from all of that and renounced it, no longer wanting to do that. I still had issues and problems, even besetting sins, but I turned away from doing those things as much as possible. I had, as John says in John 5:24, “…passed out of death into life” by believing that Jesus had taken my place when He died on the cross. I had repented and believed. I suggest that you can do the same. These people will have the same opportunity. Many of them will at great cost. Many will not. With that, let’s get into the text.

KV16: There Is No Escaping Final Judgment

16: and they *said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;

Even for the believer, there is no escaping a final judgement, although for us, it will be at a different time. Christ has paid the penalty for all our crimes. Our works for Him in terms of faithfulness to His commands and calling will be the loving standard by which He judges us. You may have heard this called the “Bema seat” judgment in 2 Cor. 5:10 – “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” Paul’s context here was the believer undergoing the testing of their life after the fact. However, it is not like the judgement in Revelation 20 at the Great White Throne. It might even be the same chair for all we know, but the tone of it will be very different I think for those who are His.

The context of this judgement is much different. Look, they call out to the very rocks and mountains to hide them. These things are inanimate objects that these panicked individuals have called out to and anthropomorphically personified to beg them for hiding places. These cries will go unheeded, because the last I heard, mountains and rocks did not have ears. What this is saying is that though they search high and low, there will be nowhere to hide from this now active wrath of God upon an unrepentant humanity. There will be no escape but to repent and believe, and many then will not. They cry out for hiding because they do not want to will themselves to turn. Let’s get into the text.

12-14: It all blows up in everybody’s faces

Those of the mid-tribulation rapture persuasion here will be in full voice agreement that people will not be able to deny that it is Jesus Christ Himself and God the Father that are initiating this turmoil and cosmic destruction upon the earth, and I can see their point in a limited sense. The way people on earth will view the Antichrist’s arrival will be as a saviour of sorts bringing world peace, so they may not make the connection. When war breaks out, most will believe that it is a “normal” response to the good that the Antichrist is attempting to do. Armed conflict has been around since Cain smacked Abel over the head with a rock and killed him. The results of such conflict have always been famine and disease, and people die. With the advent of arms technology, nuclear weapons can wipe out the WHOLE planet in a few hours. A limited nuclear war could easily kill off 25% of the Earth’s population. These could all be seen as manmade events. However, what this text describes cannot be manmade for the most part. We will discuss it in detail as we go through the text, but the sun going out and the moon turning red, the most powerful earthquake to date that moved mountains and islands on a global basis, and the sky effects, not to mention the meteor shower on steroids will all be bang-bang-bang rapid-fire happenings. No one will be able to deny it is the wrath of God upon the earth. Some may come up with other explanations, but they will only hold for a short time. Most importantly, they will all know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the wrath of God being poured out because of their sin.

This set of verses closely parallels Matt. 24:29 and Luke 21:25-26.

“But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Mt. 24:29)

“There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Lk. 21:25-26)

These conversations that the Lord has with His disciples in the gospels are speaking about this exact set of events.

Let’s get into the text and see.

12: I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;

As we have studied through these seal judgments, some have attributed each seal opening to a specific Seraph calling forth the judgment at the nod of the Father on the throne. The first was the lion, calling forth the pretender to the throne, marking the beginning of his attempt at control of the earth. The second was the ox, the servant of God, calling forth war in the greater service of God. The third was the face of the man calling forth the greed that caused the human catastrophe that involves the greedy and graceless heart of humanity. The fourth was the face of the eagle, representing the divine, calling forth the divine judgment of God on humainty of death and hell for their sins. The fifth was perhaps represented by Christ or the 24 elders as those who WILL repent a great personal cost of their lives to keep the testimony to Christ. I prefer the 24 elders, because I think they represent the glorified church in heaven. This one is God the Father Himself perhaps, as He unleashes the cataclysmic forces that will accomplish this scene with such precision and rapidity that it will stun everyone that sees it including everyone in heaven, though we will see that a bit later in the text (8:1). This is the sixth seal.
First, there was a great earthquake. The Greek is perhaps familiar in sound – seismos megas. We would translate that into “a great [in the sense of big] shaking” in English. It isn’t outside the matrix to call this a megaquake, and it is the first of a few in the book overall. It will have effects that will be felt on a global scale. It’s as if God gripped the handles and gave the earth a shake, saying, “Do I have your attention now?” Think about what in my eschatology precedes this! Beginning with the sudden catching away of the believers on the planet, then the release of each of these seals to this point, it should get humanity’s attention. Will it? Only time will tell, I suspect.
Then the sun became black. Helios egenetō melas. That’s the Greek word for the sun, then the Greek aorist tense of the verb “to become” [ginomai], followed by the word we get our English word melanin from. Melanin is the compound that makes your skin darker with more of it. Something will cause the sun to become black. There has been a suggestion from some of the crowd I hang around with that this may in fact be something manmade but that has gone horribly wrong. Bill Gates wants to block the sun to cool the planet, by the way, this is a real thing. He is suggesting something orbiting at the Lagrange point between the Earth and Sun that can have some kind of variable controls from here. Could be, but it could also be something else. The orbital issue is attractive to me personally because of the next phrase about the moon being like blood. Whatever causes it, from this description will look like someone threw a big burlap sack over the sun. And it will happen all at once I think, but again, I don’t really know. The moon being like blood has been seen in the last few years. Everyone remember the four blood moons famed in all the false prophecies from John Hagee? Those are caused by what we know as Lunar Eclipses when the earth passes between the moon and the sun. I’ve seen several over the time I’ve lived in Ottawa. With the sun at least dimming, something orbiting at the Lagrange point could have a similar effect on the moon. Then again, so could a static asteroid, so who knows? And that would be enough to get my attention. But wait, there’s more, as the Billy Maze used to say…

13: and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.

Please notice that there is no actual wind, this is a simile, a kind of metaphoric use of language, using a “like” or “as” statement. I looked for images of this particular verse, and it always somehow involved hurricane-force winds, but I don’t think this is the case. This is about something more frightening – meteorite strikes.
The stars fell from the sky. We know this is metaphorical. If the actual stars fell from the sky, it would vaporize the planet and everything on it within milliseconds. The Greek word here is asteres, the plural form and is used for the things that the ancients would have understood as points of light in the sky of any variety. We know some are “flaming balls of gas.” [My apologies if you hear Pumba from the Lion King here]. We know some are planets. Some are comets. Some are space debris. Some are asteroids. Some are even man-made, called satellites, and they mostly orbit the earth. The most likely candidate for most modern scholars are meteors [the stuff that penetrates the atmosphere and burns up] or meteorites [the stuff that survives entry]. It is unclear to me if there will be strikes, but it is not hard to imagine because of the analogy here. Figs cast off a tree by a strong wind have to land on the ground. Some will likely land on the ground. They don’t have to be big to do damage, either. It says they fell from the sky to the earth. It suggests a complete transition. I’d rather go through the hurricane.

14: The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

I can’t even picture this with the help of the simile. Like a scroll when it is rolled up. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll. I’m pretty sure that there is nothing in the human experience that will prepare anyone for this kind of effect. What I think this may represent is even harder to wrap one’s brain around, but I’ll try.
I think this is opening a very large portal to the higher dimensions that for now have been restricted from us. I say for now because it is possible that we may have an expanded dimensional reality after this earth is done with, and there is even mathematics to support it, though it’s above my level of math. I have linear algebra, I flunked first year calculus (though I have done it in economics and used it in my undergraduate thesis), and I don’t think statistics (which we used to call sadistics) applies in this kind of math. What I do know is that all the math resolves itself if we assume 11 dimensions. What that means after that, I have no idea. When the sky splits apart, it may be because those other eight dimensions are beginning to encroach on our spacetime reality in some way. I mean, the Lord will have to return physically, so I think that makes sense. What will it look like then? I can only guess, but because of something said later, it may allow earth to see into heaven where God. The sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens. Is this in some way associated to this? I do not know. I DO know that people do not like the unknown. This will fill people with fear. I think it will in some way reveal Christ to the world, and some will repent but most will not. The ones that repent will be because of some folks we will run into in the next chapter, so I’ll leave that until then.
Every mountain and island were moved out of their places. That is no doubt because of that “megaquake” I spoke of earlier. Tectonic activity is on the table if mountains and islands are both moved. Mountains being moved, i.e., moving location, shrinking, or growing, are all textbook signs of tectonic movement. The tectonic plates are the things that make up the entire earth. They are maybe the things that ruptured and sprayed the water that was under the earth into the air to cause the Noahic flood over a 40-day period. I’ve heard discussion about hos this may be restoring them to their original place, but I don’t know if that’s necessary here. Islands moving locations will cause all kinds of navigational nightmares to ships hauling goods, never mind the warships out on active deployment. Think about it! Where would Hawaii go? I mean, they move very slowly now…and what does that mean for the volcano that’s still involved in forming the islands there? By the way, Islands are undersea mountains that are tall enough to protrude from the water. Does that mean they disappear under the surface? Again, I do not know. I’m not sure John knew what he saw entirely. Look at the language he uses. It was as this. It was like that. I don’t think I could describe what is in my mind’s eye when I read this better than I have. There is just too much uncertainty.

I also think one of the implications of the way this is written is that it all happens all at once, like this explosion of activity of cosmic proportions. I get that impression because the megaquake that began the description of the things released by this seal are seen in the last part of this section of text. It’s all one big action that has more than one horrible consequence. The ash from the volcanic activity that will accompany the tectonic plate movement may reach an orbital altitude and be what darkens the sun and turns the moon blood-red. What cannot be denied is that this is a sovereign act of God, and that God is pouring out all of His stored up wrath against millennia of sinful behaviour from humanity, that by this time will have reached terrible proportions. And all of us deserve all of this without Christ. It is a fearful thing indeed to fall into the hands of the living God.

The worst part of this in my mind is that all the sinners, despite their vocal denial of all of this, will know EXACTLY what is going on and why. Next paragraph.

15-17: They all know why this is happening

I have very rarely met a real atheist, but I have met a few. Most of them are failed agnostics, because to believe everything came from nothing is intellectual suicide of sorts, and they all know it. They debate as if they can change the fact that there is a God and they must answer to Him for their lives. They cannot. Worse, in suppressing that truth within themselves, God gives them over to such a delusion that they will believe the lie of their own imagination. It has a few different forms today, but it all comes down to this self-suppression of those things true and right and good. They believe their own fiction and roll with it. They don’t want to hear what we have to say because it will wake them up to their need to deal with sin. Some will even suggest that there is no such thing as sin. But they know. They all know. They just won’t admit it to themselves. Let’s read on and we’ll see what the text says about this.

15: Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;

Because of the great global destruction that has just left the entire earth devastated, they try to hide in that same destroyed and altered earth. All of them. The rulers, the military commanders, the billionaires and millionaires, those who were strong enough to make it as far as they did, every slave, every free person – all of them – hid in caves and among rocks in what was left of the mountains. Maybe some had expensive bomb shelters. Many will apparently have none. Maybe those so-called safe places weren’t so safe as they thought. Can you imagine everyone on earth then looking for shelter in caves? I’m not sure there is enough shelter for anyone at all. The devastation is horrifying to imagine.

16: and they *said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;

Here is the key verse to this section of text. It is the absolute proof that there will be no real atheists there. They all begged, prayed if you will, the mountains and the rocks to fall on them and hide them. They were VERY specific in their request. First, notice they are not praying to God. They are praying to the creation and not the creator. This is shades of Romans 1:18-23, my friends. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” And it doesn’t stop there, either! Verses 24-25 say more – “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Does this not exactly explain what this passage says? The people that find themselves in that place, do they not find themselves in that place because they are unrepentant individuals that already have the wrath of God abiding on them and all that implies? They do. They must. Or our Christian suffering has no real and lasting meaning or benefit.
Who are they wanting the rocks and hills to hide them from? The very presence of Him Who sits on the throne of the universe, perhaps in their plain view now with that rolled back sky, and from the wrath of the Lamb. There is NO mistaking what is happening here, and Who is responsible for the things that will occur in this passage of text’s description. And they will know when in history they are as well, probably meaning the Lord Jesus did find at least a little faith on the earth, as His people were faithful to tell others about the gift He died to offer all those that will turn to Him! See what the next verse says.

17: for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

People know there is wrath coming, and they will recognize it when it finally arrives for what it really is and for who is the prime cause of it, and they will, from this verse, know that they deserve it and that it will be impossible to escape. As a side note, this is also proof for those who would deny the trinity. The day of THEIR, PLURAL and masculine, genitive pronoun, wrath has come. I won’t say a lot about it, it’s not the point of the passage, but it is there so I point it out.
What to me is critical here is that they realize that no one is able to stand before that wrath. They know what it is, they know who is causing it, they know they are unable to avoid it. And yet they will try. Morons that we all are, even when confronted with all of this revealed in the heavens, with all of this direct evidence of the power of God and His wrath, we will not turn from our sin. No way, no how.

Now, after having seen all of that immense power on display that NO ONE WILL DENY is the DUNAMIS, or miraculous power of God, I have to ask: Who in the world would want to (try to) live through that? I mean, sure, it will all be something to see, I get that. But who likes falling to the ground and not being able to get back up? Who likes dodging falling rocks that are over 600℃ from entering the earth’s atmosphere and not burning all away in the heat? And after the sun goes dark from whatever is blocking it from reaching earth at full intensity, you will probably find the cold ones with your toe in the dark. Ouch!

My friends, ALL of this WILL happen at some point in the future, and probably all at once. It will be what I can only call cataclysmic. However, we can escape all of this coming wrath, however you want to define it. I think it begins at the release of the Antichrist to be in charge with the first horse. Others think it is right here. It really doesn’t matter, because either way, real believers in Christ, seen by their following of Christ before this time and their unsilenceable faith in Christ because He died in their place and regenerated them to make them new creatures in Himself, will be rescued, according to Paul in Galatians 1:4, from this present evil age. All of us will go to and be with OUR Lord Jesus for all the rest of the ages of the ages, to use the Biblical expression.

If you don’t like the sound of what is coming, then listen to me now, because this is the way it will be escaped: by turning from your sin and toward Lord Jesus Christ, Who died in your place to pay the penalty for all of YOUR personal sins. I love it. Repent and believe. Turn away from your sins. The Greek word here, metanoia, means to change your mind or direction 180º and then go in the opposite direction. That is why you will cease from your sinning. You stop because it is the right thing, not because you got caught or to escape consequences. And you will do this because our Lord will cause you to be born from above, regenerated, made new, and give you the heart and will to please Him and not simply yourself anymore. You will begin to believe that He paid the price for YOUR sin and you will love Him because of that. He died for you and then rose again. It is really that easy if you will turn with all of your being. Otherwise, you will get to see for yourself what it means that the sky is rolled up like a scroll.

If that is what you believe, then turn now and don’t wait! If you should be alive to face the coming wrath, you will still theoretically have the same choice, but I must warn you. There is no guarantee that you will be given another chance to turn from your sins. Oh, you may, but at that time in history, it will carry very dire consequences to follow Him as His new creation. It will likely cost you your life. Think about those martyrs under the altar in the fifth seal. Ultimately you must do as the Lord wants YOU to do, but He has said in His word that He desires that ALL people should come to Him and be saved. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 say, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Why would you refuse that kind of offer? Turn now while you still have opportunity and respond to His call to you and be completely justified before Him.

That is what I saw in the text this time. Next time, we will look at Revelation 7:1-3, where we will break from the opening of seals to an interlude of some kind. We will discuss what that is then, although I believe it is related to the opening of the seals. We still have a seal to go, remember.