Discovering Revelation Part 18
Revelation Part 18
Chapter 6 of Revelation from last week!
• What we will see here is like a movie trailer in this chapter for the rest of Revelation!
• Chapter 6 essentially is a summary of all that will follow from here on out in our study of Revelation!
These Judgments are going to be worse than anything history has known!
• They will be Progressive!
• They will increase in intensity an severity as they unfold!
• The Pattern?
• 7 Seals, 7 Trumpets, 7 Bowls all judgments! When done its done!
1. The First Seal—Rider on White Horse
• Some people are fooled with His identity here!
• You see Jesus comes at the end of Revelation Chapter 19!
• He comes to end the bloodshed and war!
• This rider here at the beginning of the Tribulation starts the Bloodshed and war but starts with a sense of false peace!
• Bringing peace treaties between countries!
• He will go back on his word of peace!
2. The Second Seal—Rider on a Red Horse, War!
• We see a Red Horse! - Devastation comes with this horse!
• Fiery red color means blood bath - Terrorism - Carnage!
3. The Third Seal—Rider on a Black Horse, Famine!
• We see here the Black Horse” - See a Pair of scales for rationing food! Famine in the world!
Matthew 24:7
For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.
4. The Fourth Seal, Rider on a Pale Green Horse! Death and Hades or Hell followed him!
• Notice Hell and Death is riding together!
• One quarter of the population will be taken out at once! 1.86 Billion people gone!
• A population greater than the country of China gone!
• Wild Beasts they prey upon the weakened people!
• Now let’s pick up the subsequent seal number 5!
Revelation 6:9-17
The Fifth Seal—Martyrs
9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
• When we get to Chapter 7 you will see a great Harvest of souls like never before throughout the world.
• You see there will be one great final revival to take place on the earth!
• The opening of the fifth seal teaches that after the Tribulation has begun there will also be a great persecution of the children of God!
• Tribulation saints! These folks had not received Christ as Savior prior to the rapture! But after receiving the faithful witnesses depicted in our next chapter 7!
• The “souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God “ these are the Martyr’s killed during the time of these judgments!
• There will also be persecution across the globe of believers led by Satan, his demons, and finally the anti-Christ!
• There will be lots of persecution during this time especially when the anti-Christ sets Himself up as God.
• During that time he will make war with the saints and overcome them!
• There prayer will not deter the persecution! This persecution has to be completed!
10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
• So here we see in this seal the judgment of God’s wrath on the evil in the world not the children of God!
• The force of their pleading prayers to God to bring vengeance on their murderers!
• Gods hand will move in response to those martyred because they fulfill His ultimate purpose!
• They "cried out” with very strong emotions to God!
• Their petition to Him is very loud! To the “Lord, Holy and True”
• The word translated Lord speaks of God the Father’s Power and Authority!
• Their question of How long Lord? Because they desire to see Satan and the anti-Christ destroyed.
• This has been just about a perpetual cry of Israel for years! But here the righteous are asking Lord when? When will this pain end?
Psalms 13:1
How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
• “Those who dwell on earth” this is the ungodly ones one earth or earth dwellers!
• For the ground cries out for their blood, such as when Cain murdered Able!
11 And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.
• Here we see the response of God to His martyred saints! A Gift and a Spoken Word!
• We know they are believers based on the white robes Christ gives them! God’s Grace! His eternal righteousness! We will see later just how incredible this is!
• Told to relax or rest take it easy for a little while longer!
• They were to stop the cry for vengeance and enjoy Gods heavenly rest until Gods wrath arrives! His time!
• He is waiting for the rest of those martyrs who have yet to be martyred but be sure it won’t be very long!
• Fellow servants and brethren are two classes of people here those who have died, and those who are alive but willing to die as Martyrs! But won’t!
The Sixth Seal—Terror
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;
• There is an overwhelming fear with the sixth seal! There’s a “Reason for fear, a Range of Fear, and the reaction of Fear”
• This is different as God is acting independently of humans here!
• By the time this seal is opened we are past the midpoint of the Tribulation period!
• And we are now in the great Tribulation
Matthew 24:21
For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.
• Now we see massive persecution on a tremendous scale never experienced before!
• The Anti-Christ will enter the Temple and desecrate it! The “abomination of desolation!”
• There’s a Great Earthquake on the planet like never before ever seen!
• This will be so bad that only God could do this!
• There will be a cataclysmic earthquake unheard of on the earth! The worst of all earthquakes!
• This will be so strong it will shake the heavens and the earth!
• The second disaster as the sun will become black as a mourners robe!
Joel 2:31
“The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.”
• Think about this the sun will rise and not give off it light neither will the moon!
• Just to add more panic in the planet!
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.
• So from the dark skies comes meteors or asteroids pounding the earth!
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 imagine what John is describing here!
• Obviously the atmosphere is effected! The sky will somehow split apart!
• Then every mountain and island are moved out of place! What?
• The whole crust of this good earth will be moved out of place and shifting!
• These events will cataclysmic disasters! The most terrifying disasters on the planet!
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;
• This will just cause people of all places to run and hide from it all!
• They will effect every class of society from the wealthiest to the poorest!
• From Kings and Queens to every person in society at the lowest level.
• The reaction of these people will be?
• Not repentance, but pure panic!
• They will finally acknowledge that God has done this in judgement!
• Yet they will continue to follow the anti-Christ!
• And God will abandon them!
2 Thessalonians 2:11-12
11 For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
• Those who harden their hearts will in the end have their hearts hardened by God!
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; 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
• These folks react foolishly and irrationally by hiding in the very places that are being shaken!
• These events will prompt a worldwide prayer meeting’ praying to Mother Nature and not to God!
• They would rather die than face the wrath of Holy God!
• “Him who sits on the throne” this refers to God!
• The people will have a clear understanding that God has been behind every judgment!
• The Lamb, Jesus Christ is the agent of direct judgment!
• He rules and reigns and judges like the Lion that He is!
• The day of the Lord horrors precede the coming of the Lord especially when the worst is yet to come with the seventh seal! The trumpet and bowl judgments!
• This scene closes with a question!
• Who is able to stand? The answer is “No one”!
• What’s good about it is “We as Believers will not be there!” Amen?
• Great multitudes of people will be saved in the midst of the terrors of divine judgment!
• Both gentiles and Jews! But for everyone else!
Hebrews 10:31
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.