Revelation 6-9: Reflections

I owe the bulk of this material to a wonderful commentary by Mitchell Reddish simply titled, Revelation.  It is one of the best I have read to date and worth every penny.   It even comes with a CD-ROM with maps, pictures and the entire commentary in PDF format.    

The first few lessons have been discussion driven, covering chapter 1 the first week, chapters 2 and 3 the second week, 4 and 5 the 3rd week and this week we are taking chapters 6-9 as a unit.   Enjoy.  

 

Photo:  The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6: THE FIRST SIX SEALS 

 

• The language of the apocalypse is more poetic than scientific.   John is about to portray three series of judgments in different ways, yet they each portray the same or similar idea.  John uses seven seals, seven trumpets and even seven bowls as if to say, “If you don’t get it the first time, maybe the third time will be a charm.”    

 

There are examples of apocalyptic language in the Gospels.  Jesus uses similar imagery in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  There are similarities in the order of woes announced between Jesus and John:

 

Eschatological Woes 

 

Matthew 24:6, 7, 9a, 29                                                                        

 

 

1. Wars

2. International Strife 

3. Famines 

4. Earthquakes 

5. Persecutions 

6. Eclipses of the sun and moon; falling of the 

stars; shaking of the powers of heaven 

 

Mark 13:7-9a, 24-25 

1. Wars 

2. International strife 

3. Earthquakes 

4. Famines 

5. Persecutions 

6. Eclipses of the sun and moon; falling of the 

stars; shaking of the powers of heaven 

 

Luke 21:9-12a, 25-26 

1. Wars 

2. International strife 

3. Earthquakes 

4. Famines 

5. Persecutions 

6. Signs in the sun, moon, and stars; men 

fainting for fear of the things coming on the 

world; shaking of the powers of heaven 

 

Revelation 6:2-17; 7:1 

Seal 1. War 

Seal 2. International Strife 

Seal 3. Famine 

Seal 4. Pestilence (Death and Hades) 

Seal 5. Persecutions 

Seal 6. (6:12–7:3) Earthquakes; eclipse of the 

sun; ensanguining of the moon; falling 

of the stars; men calling on the rocks 

to fall on them; shaking of the powers 

of  heaven; four destroying winds

The First Four Seals

 

• Form a distinct group.   See “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Albrecht Durer.  
• Imagery perhaps taken from Zechariah 1:7-17 and 6:1-8.
• The events set in motion by the opening of the scroll are a prelude to the coming of Christ himself.   Both good news and bad news, judgment and grace, are unleashed. 

 

Question:   Is God’s Judgment the opposite of God’s Grace?  

 

• Riders one and two symbolize external attacks and defeat, as well as internal strife, civil war, anarchy and international conflict.   The Gospel pronouncement that there will be “wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7) is coming to pass.  

 

• Third Rider  – carrying balance scales
  • “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay” (6:6).  
  • A day’s pay = one denarius.  The prices announced are exorbitant, meaning the common laborer is being asked to work an entire day to provide just enough food for himself with nothing left over for his family.  The judgment of this seal, then, is famine. 
  • John envisions the final days as those where the poor are starving and the rich are unaffected by the shortages.   The “haves” exhibit no concern for the “have-nots.”

 

• Fourth Rider – Death, or Pestilence (Greek thanatos can mean either)

 

Fifth Seal 

 

The Cry of the Martyrs:  Their cry is a cry for the vindication of God and God’s justice.  To the world it looked as though the martyrs died in vain. The powers of evil have conquered.  The prayer of the martyrs is that God reverse this judgment of the world so that God is seen as sovereign and in control.   Since we know who is on the throne (Rev. 4-5) we know the answer to this prayer.  

 

The Wrath of God.  Some brief reflections….

 

1. The wrath of God and the Lamb is real.   God takes sin and evil seriously.  God hates sin and evil because they have distorted and even destroyed God’s good creation.  The results of sin and evil are evidenced by the opening of the first 4 seals where human pride, greed, and arrogance are on display and lead to war and bloodshed.  God’s faithful are killed.   God has a certain “wrath” towards evil that threatens God’s loves.  
2. God’s response to human evil and sin is not vindictive.  God acts out of love to bring healing to a world that is wrecked by human sin.  The vision of the heavenly throne room in Rev. 4 is our clue that God is still on the throne and is still creating.   God is the God who by the end of Revelation will announce, “Behold, I make all things new.”  God is still conforming the world to God’s ultimate intentions.
3. The “wrath” of God is defined by the Cross of Christ.  Since the wrath of God is the wrath of the Lamb, the “slaughtered lamb” becomes the clue to how God affects salvation and restoration in God’s world.  God’s purposes are ultimately achieved through sacrificial love, not the coercion and oppression of the world’s nation-states.   The great joy and hope of those who already know God as we enter Judgment is that we know the Judge.  We know the one who is the Suffering Servant, the Man of Sorrows, the Lamb of God. 

 

Contemporary Connections…

 

1. The fifth seal, following the calamity of the first four, demonstrates that God has not and will not abandon the world to the forces of evil.    No matter how bad it looks outside, God and the Lamb are still on the throne.
2. Moving from lament to praise.
   1. The cries from under the altar.  The most appropriate place for such a cry is in the context of worship.  The Psalms are a virtual hymnbook of laments and cries of anguish – it is honest worship.   
      1. Walter Brueggemann says, “A church that goes on singing ‘happy songs’ in the face of raw reality is doing something very different from what the Bible itself does.”  
      2. The Psalmist turns laments into praise (see Psalm 13:1-6).   
      3. Philip Yancey writes, “Doubt is the skeleton upon which the flesh of faith clings.”  

 

Chapter 7: AN INTERLUDE 

 

John pauses in in the midst of his scenes of persecution and trials to offer the faithful a scene of reassurance and comfort.   Some major themes in this chapter include…

 

SEALING 

• To be marked with God’s seal means 1) you are God’s possession and 2) you have God’s divine protection.   

1. To be God’s possession means you have dignity, worth and status as a child of the living God.   You are not defined by the world or it’s standards but by God’s.   But being God’s possession also means we have certain responsibilities.  The letters to the churches in chapters 2-3 point out how many Christians were not living up to their responsibility as God’s children.  John challenges the church to be faithful and to remember to whom they belong.
2. Divine protection does not mean literal, physical protection for the faithful.  John expects that faithfulness to Christ can and will bring suffering, even death.  The way of the Lamb is the way of the cross.  Eugene Boring notes, “Faithful Christians are preserved through (not from!) the great persecution that is about to be unleashed upon them.”  God is with us and still on the throne even as we pass through trials of all sorts, even death.  

 

144,000 

• Not to be taken literally.   Number is a multiple of the numbers 10 and 12, both of which signify completeness.
• Imagery depicts the church as the new people of God – the new Israel.  The entire church is the new Israel in which racial or ethnic distinctions play no part.
• Or, could it be a distinct group within the entire church?  The numbers are drawn from each tribe (12 tribes).  Perhaps it is the completeness of a special group within the church – the martyrs?  Since it is the martyrs who pay the ultimate price for their faithfulness, perhaps John singles them out for special mention and special encouragement.   In a symbolic way, John answers the question, “How long?” of the martyrs below the alter in chapter 6.  

 

THE GREAT MULTITUDE 

• Robed in white – the color of victory, celebration, and purity
• Palm branches – symbols of celebration and victory
• Inclusive – they are from every “nation, tribe, peoples and languages”  They are too many to count.  John sees an image of heaven that embraces all walks of life.
  • How open to this reality are we as a church?  Is it true that the most segregated hour in America is 11AM on Sundays?   
  • John’s vision of heavenly worship becomes for the church of today both a standard by which we measure ourselves and a prod to goad us to bring that vision to reality.  We are forced to ask if we have truly become the inclusive community John sees or if we have become racial, ethnic, and class ghettos.  

 

• Those worshipping confess that salvation belongs to God and the Lamb.  Victory, wholeness, well-being, health – all of this belongs and comes from God, not Rome or Caesar or any human invention.  The source for our life is God and God alone.  
• Humility is the mark of those who have been saved: ALL is God’s; nothing is ours.

 

Chapter 8: THE SEVENTH SEAL AND THE FOUR TRUMPETS

 

Contemporary Connections…

 

1. ENJOY THE SILENCE 

• In a world of go, go, go and noise, noise, noise, it is fitting that Rev. 8:1 opens with a pregnant pause – a period of silence.    
• Worship, John wants us to know, should include moments of silence.  Worship is not just about offering ourselves up to God but also a time when we open ourselves most fully to the presence of God.   How can we do this if we are filling our ears with noise on an almost constant basis?   If you wondering why God doesn’t speak more often maybe it is because you are not listening.  
• The silence of 8:1 is one of awe and expectancy.   It anticipates what God is yet to do.   When you come to church, do you come with a sense of awe and expectancy?  What might happen if you did?  

 

1. PRAYER 

• The prayers of the saints are powerful and effective because they are in harmony with the ultimate will of God.   What if instead of praying that God bless what we are doing, we prayed that God would open our eyes to what God is already blessing?  What if we got involved in those things we already knew God promised to bless?  
• To ask God to judge those who abuse and oppress may be to invite God’s judgment on ourselves.   Reddish writes, “Through our actions (or failure to act) do we perpetuate a system that discriminates against people of other races, against women, against the poor, or against people of different ethnic backgrounds?  Do we enjoy a higher standard of living than others in our community or in our world because we are exploiting cheap labor?  Do we care about the physical and psychological damage done to millions because of hunger, homelessness, and poverty?  If we sincerely pray for justice and God’s will be done, perhaps we will become more sensitive to the way sin which we are in opposition to God’s kingdom.”  

 

1. THE EXODUS 

• The Exodus is one of the “macro-stories” of the Bible, one that seeks to portray the human condition and present the solution to that dilemma.  These stories are so potent because, even though they are rooted in history they are timeless – they speak to us today.  

 

• Marcus Borg writes that the exodus story…

“provocatively images the human condition as bondage, an image with both cultural-political and psychological-spiritual dimensions of meaning. It invites us to ask, “To what am I in bondage, and to what are we in bondage?” 

The answer for most of us is “Many things.” We are in bondage to cultural messages about what we should be like and what we should pursue—messages about success, attractiveness, gender roles, the good life. We are in bondage to voices from our own past, and to 

addictions of various kinds. 

The Pharaoh who holds us in bondage is inside of us as well as outside of us. Who is the Pharaoh within me who has me enslaved and will not let me go? What instruments of fear and oppression doe she use, this Pharaoh who tries everything to remain in control? What plagues must strike him? If the problem is bondage, the solution of course, is liberation. . . . 

Liberation involves coming out from under the lordship of Pharaoh and the lordship of culture.”

 

• The plagues brought on by the trumpets is good news.  They are reminders to the faithful that God is in control, that the demand of God to “Let my people go!” can not be resisted, not even by a mighty Pharaoh like Rome, or our present world and culture.  To those who feel alienated, alone, overwhelmed, enslaved, or in bondage this message of chapter 8 can be a sustaining force in their lives.

Chapter 9: THE FIFTH AND SIXTH TRUMPETS 

 

LOCUSTS 

• Swarms of locusts were well-known terrors in the Mediterranean world.  They devoured crops in days and threatened to bring famine upon agrarian societies.  Locusts are used in the Bible as symbols of destruction and divine punishment (Deut. 28:42; 1 Kings 8:37; 2 Chr 6:28; Psalms 78:46; 105:34; Nahum 3:15).    
• John may have been drawing from two Old Testament texts that would have been well known – the eight Egyptian plague in Exodus 10:1-20 and Joel 1-2, where swarms of locusts are used as powerful symbols of God’s judgment upon the people.  
• They have a king over them, the same king who is the angel over the “bottomless pit.”  His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, which means “destruction” or “ruin.”  The Greek rendering of this name, that John gives, is Apollyon.  What is interesting about this is its similarity to the ancient Greek god Apollo who was widely worshipped in the Mediterranean.  One of the symbols of the god Apollo was the locust.  By naming the angel of the bottomless pit Apollyon, John may have been taking a swipe at the Apollo cult.  Even more intriguing, John may have directed this towards the emperor Domitian, who liked to claim that he was the living embodiment of the god Apollo.  If so, John is making it clear to his audience that he thinks the emperor of Rome is in reality the king of evil, the leader of destruction.   

Contemporary Connections…

 

The Locusts…

• Much ink has been spilt speculating what the locusts of Rev. 9 might be.   For instance, Hal Lindsey, writing in the 1970’s, was convinced that the flying locusts with stingers in their tails was an allusion to the Huey Cobra helicopters used in Vietnam.   

What if John is not trying to predict some future event but is painting a picture using vivid imagery to show that evil has no place in God’s ultimate plans for the world and that divine judgment will come?   

• These locusts painted by John have human faces.  Evil may take on many sinister forms in, but in the end, it has a human face, for it is caused by the rebellion of human wills against the will of God. 
• This human face of evil is perhaps the most terrifying of all the plagues.  It seems that God uses humanity’s own corruption and evil as a means of its own punishment.  The evil we create can and will turn against us.   The “wrath” of God has long been thought to be not something God actively engages in but rather God’s removal of God’s hand, his grace, thus allowing the evil we do to reach its logical conclusions.   It’s a scary world without God.  

 

Spiritual Blindness…

• John has a different perspective on the world than most of the people of his day, even those in his churches.  He sees a world that has turned its back on God, following its own desires, gods and idols and allowed evil to run rampant.  Part of the function of the Apocalypse, with all its plagues, judgments, violence and wrath, is to convince its readers to change, to repent, in order that they might avoid such calamities.
• John is not so much saying this will happen, but this could happen if you continue down the path you are presently pursuing.  His task is like the prophets of the Old Testament who brought words of judgment – judgment was always conditional upon the people’s failure to repent.  

 

Question: How spiritually perceptive are we?  Do we see God’s acts of warning as well as grace in our world and our lives, or are we blind to the activity of God?   Revelation 6-9 invites us to be more perceptive, to open our eyes, and live in God’s kingdom, not the world’s.