Revelation 6
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Revelation 6
The Coming Calamities
Intro:
Read Verses:
Main Point: The opening of the Seals precedes the coming of the Day of the Lord. Believers must be prepared and aware of what is going on.
I. The Coming Horseman (1-8)
Who are the horsemen?
Jesus has taken the scroll and he begins to break the 7 seals. As a side note, the number 7 is the number of perfection and reoccurs throughout the book. And the Bible. Chapter 6 Tells us about 6 of the seals and in chapter 7, which we will get to next week, gives us a pause before Jesus opens the 7th seal. The first four seals release or call forth the four horseman of the apocalypse.
The four horseman is one of the aspects of Revelation that many people are going to be familiar with from pop culture references. It was a song by Metallica, It was a popular wrestling team in the mid 80s to the 90s, with Ric Flair, the Anderson brothers, and Tully Blanchard. In the movie Tombstone, Wyatt Earp quotes verse 8 when he hunts down the remaining member of the Cowboys.
But who are the four horseman and what do they represent?
As we get into this, there are two ways to look at it.
1 if you believe in a pretribulation rapture, then the door John walks through is or represents the rapture and so everything he sees after takes place after the church or everyone who is a believer, is caught up to heaven.
The other theories are a mid tribulation rapture a post tribulation or perhaps more accurate, a pre-wrath rapture.
The first one, pre-trib, gets you out of here and we are just watching all of the events and we avoid this mess.
The other ways, means we, the church, and if everything started tomorrow, are here for at least part of these calamities.
The White Horse represents the Antichrist. In a later chapter Jesus is mentioned as riding a white horse as well, but most scholars think this represents the antichrist. The conqueror of the first seal should be identified with the long-awaited Antichrist, the ruler who would come and destroy the city and the sanctuary mentioned in Dan 9:26.
With the arrival of the antichrist,everything else false into place afterward with what Happens.
The Red Horse represents war. This is war on a scale that no one has seen before. People are picking sides, the antichrist or Christ. People who are living in this time figure out that this is not good and want to fight to keep what they have and are fighting against the Antichrist and army or allies. If the church is here, we fight because we know who this person is. If we are not, others are figuring things out a little too late and have to endure the pain.
There will be no peace. The horseman has been given power to take all peace from the world.it will be a constant war.
The Black horse represents famine. With the wars going on, fields will be destroyed, the farmers will have to go and fight, leaving any fields empty and animals in their barns yards to starve. and food production will decrease and eventually stop. The cost of the wheat and barley compared to. Days wages gives us the picture of either buying a little bit of the good stuff, the wheat, which is healthier for you or you could buy more barely, but it is not as nutritious for you. So you are going to have to make a decision.
It is like buying lots of. McDonald’s or a little bit of food from Whole Foods. One will kill you buy making you unhealthy and with. The Other will keep you healthy so you can take longer to starve to death.
However, as a way of good news there does seem to be a limitation placed on the rider of the black horse. While he is permitted to decimate the grain crops, he is told for the time being not to destroy the oil or the wine.
Hence, olive trees and vineyards are protected. So what does that mean? Well No one really knows, it may mean that the poor people will suffer quicker than the wealthy people because they have have olive trees and vineyards.
So does God mean the literal plants? I do not think so. In Romans 11, Paul explains that gentiles have been grafted onto the Olive tree, that is the covenant that was Given to Israel. Needless to say, the “olive tree” in the above passage is symbolic; i.e. it represents something else. Given the overall context of Romans 9, 10 and 11 – that is, the context of God’s covenants with the Israelites – it appears that the various parts of the olive tree represent the following:
– The “natural branches” represent individual Israelites – i.e., genetic Jews.
– The “wild olive shoots” represent Gentiles – i.e., people from other nations.
– The “root” of the tree represents God’s covenant promises to the patriarchs – Abraham, Issac and Jacob.
Interestingly, the “olive tree” metaphor for Israel is used in other places as well. For example, consider this verse – in which Jeremiah addresses the Israelites:
Jeremiah 11:16 (ESV):
16 The Lord once called you ‘a green olive tree, beautiful with good fruit.’ But with the roar of a great tempest he will set fire to it, and its branches will be consumed.
In John 15, Jesus explains that He is the true Vine and we his followers are the branches.
Elsewhere in the Bible , the vineyard represents God’s people.
Isaiah 5:2
He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
Jeremiah 12:10
Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have trampled down my portion; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
So it seems that God is here referring to His people. So the meaning of this could be that we will be here during the tribulation , but we will be protected to some extent from the worst of it.
Application: God will limit the effects of the events.
God always keeps it from being as bad as it could be at least until the day of the Lord. That last day when everything will end.
God is still in control of all of these events. His power is on display.
The Pale Horse represents death and hell or hades will follow with him. Death parades on his horse and the realm of the departed follows like a street sweeper behind him, cleaning up the debris of the fallen and imprisoning them in that shadowy world. The grave will be behind him. Hades or the grave was where the dead go to wait the resurrection.
War, and famine bring death on a huge scale.
But the fifth seal awaits. And there is a small break in the action.
II. The Coming Persecution (9-11)
Wait a little longer
John draws our attention to the Fifth seal and to an altar. And underneath that, John and sees souls of martyrs, people who had been slain for the word of God.
They were going to bat for everyone else ad they ask God, How long before you will judge and avenge our blood.
How long O Lord is a common refrain or cry in Psalms. How long do I have to endure this calamity and persecution.
But they were told to wait a little longer. Its not over yet, but soon it will be. But first, they number of their fellows servants should be complete. We do not know how many people have been elected or saved, But God does. He knows who’s name is in the book of life and the number of those people. If it looks like a ledger book, it goes from 1 to a jillion. And when the last name is ticked off, then that is it.
In this statement we see God’s grace at work. There is an end to everything. He considers the martyrs or witnesses His protected people. His wrath is against the inhabitants of the Earth, which is. A term used to designate those who follow the beast and receive his mark.
Meanwhile the people waiting are given a white robe which is a pledge of future and final glory (7: 9) and
a consoling proof that no judgment awaited them (20:4–6), is a favourite gift in the Jewish heaven
However we or people who become Christians during this period will have to endure The people who bring death to God’s people will bring calamity on themselves and this will cause them to panic.
III. The Coming Panic (12-17)
The sixth seal flips everything in the atrial order around. The natural order becomes the unnatural disorder. The stable earth has a great earthquake. The bright yellow sun becomes black as sack cloth. The bright white full moon becomes blood red.
The picture is from artist Francis Danby and was done about 1830.
Stars Fall, the sky disappears, and mountains are removed from its place.
Imagine siting here and all the mountains out here just up and leave. I almost see a hand reach down and pick up the mountains like a farmer pulling carrots out of the ground.
Imagine how you would react when you see all of these things. Earthquakes are fairly normal, but here John tells us it is a great earthquake. I know people said they actually felt the earthquake in the bay area in 1988 that happened during the World Series. That one was a 6.9 magnitude.
But mountains disappearing, the sky rolling up, stars are gone might represent something just extremely terrible and out of the ordinary. The vivid language is there to get your attention and make people perk up and listen.
Whether these things are literal or symbolic the vivid imagery is enough to make anyone panic. Because what it represents is the end. The sun, the stars, the moon. It is all normal. What do we do when we leave a room, we turn out the lights. The lights are going off. And I think this will literally happen and it will be more terrible than we can even figuratively imagine.
All men are reduced to a common denominator quaking in fear before the judgment of the God who alone is sovereign.
In fact, v. 10 suggests that physical death is preferable to facing the Lamb in his wrath. Hence, all rankings of men call to the rocks and the mountains, pleading that these fall and hide them from the face of the One who sits on the throne and more specifically from the wrath of the Lamb. God who has always been characterized by grace in creation and the Lamb who has been characterized by grace in redemption are suddenly depicted in their eternal anger against all that is sinful and evil.
Conclusion
How do we avoid God’s wrath? How do we remain confident that even through all or any of these calamities we may face that God still loves us?
Place your faith in Jesus’ work on the cross. Put Your trust in the almighty God.
Because If the description of the events to come are something we can’t fathom of how bad it will be, the flip side is also true, the descriptions of your eternal life in the new earth and new heavens is also incomprehensible as to how glorious and awesome that is going to be.
So we must be patient, enduring whatever God allows knowing that His anger is being directed at our enemies. At his enemies.
Repent of your sins. Fear God now and follow him before it is too late. We who are saved take solace in the fact that even though this may be terrible, it is nothing that awaits those who do not repent.
Prayer:
Look with an eye of pity on the great ruins and desolation of your church. Heal up the wounds in all the nations. Regard it as your own flock, be gentle as to your own family, care for it as your own vineyard, love it as your own spouse.
Bless it with your grace, guide it with your Spirit, and defend it always with your mighty power.
Scatter, confound, and overthrow any forces that fight against the church, and have mercy on the church in this land. Bless us with true faith.
Deal with us, and with those who come after us, in your grace and favor, for the sake of your great name, and for the sake of our only Mediator Jesus Christ, to whom be all praise and glory, with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forevermore, amen.
Arthur Dent, “A Prayer for the Church,” in Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans, ed. Robert Elmer (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 296.