First things first, let’s lay out the big picture of what’s going on here in Revelation chapters 6 and 7 because this is unbelievably important. If you can grasp what’s going on in Revelation 6 and 7, really, the rest of Revelation falls into place a whole lot more easily.

And so in big-picture terms, what’s happening here is that one chapter ago in chapter 5, the Lamb, King Jesus, who redeems humanity and restores the world, who conquers the forces of darkness by his self-giving sacrificial love, his blood poured out on the cross in our place, takes the scroll.

The scroll, remember, this is kind of an image. This sort of represents God’s redeeming and restoring plan for the world. The scroll kind of represents his plan to fulfill the promise that he made in Genesis 3:15 to crush the head of the devil.

The promise he made in Genesis 12 that he would bless all the peoples of the earth through one of the descendants of Abraham. The promise he made to David in 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, that he would place a descendant of David on the throne who would be better than David, who would rule for all of eternity and would rule with justice and would undo the fall, unbreak the world, put everything right.

Again, the promise that he made through all of the prophets that he would send a child to be born and that the kingdom of this world would be on his shoulders and that he would put everything right.

Again, this Lamb is him.

And he takes the scroll and he opens the scroll. And because he has opened the scroll, that means God’s plan to redeem humanity and restore all things will take place.

And then everything that happens throughout chapter 6 and chapter 7 is walking us through a series of visions that kind of illustrate what it looks like for him to fulfill that redeeming and restoring plan from the time of Jesus all the way through the second coming of Jesus, when he takes the throne of this world back for himself fully and finally.

The Lamb Opens the Scroll

And so in chapter 6, he begins to open that scroll.

And so what’s happening in chapter 6 is not just random bad stuff. This is not just horror movie imagery. This is not just stuff that’s meant to scare you into walking down the aisle at the revival service.

This is God fulfilling his promise to redeem humanity and restore our world in the form of a series of visions of what’s called warning judgment.

This is the Lamb executing the covenant justice of God.

Now, that term covenant justice, that’s an Old Testament term. That’s an Old Testament category.

Essentially, it’s talking about the way that God will fulfill his covenant to redeem humanity and restore our world by destroying the forces of darkness and everyone who aligns themselves with it and rescuing his people.

So he will destroy the devil and the forces of darkness and everyone who is following after the devil and the forces of darkness. And he will rescue everyone who comes to him in genuine faith and repentance.

That is God’s covenant justice all the way from Genesis to Revelation.

The Pattern of Covenant Justice

That is what the covenant justice of God looks like. And he lays down a specific kind of pattern of what that covenant justice looks like in Leviticus chapter 26, in Deuteronomy chapter 28, in the entire book of Ezekiel.

It’s kind of a meditation on God’s covenant justice as Ezekiel walks through the things that were happening to the people of God at that point in time in his day.

There’s this pattern that says, “When you follow after me faithfully, when you follow after me in faith and repentance, I will place my hand of blessing on you. And when you rebel against me, I will give you the fruits of your rebellion.”

“I will give you the conquest that comes from your rebellion, the war that comes from your rebellion, the famine that comes from your rebellion, the plagues, the death, and so on and so forth that comes from your rebellion.”

He says, “When my people are rebelling against me, what they are doing is rebelling against my good created design where there is no conquest, is no war, is no famine, is no plague, is no death.”

“But when my people purposefully, persistently, unrepentantly rebel against me, I will give them the conquest that their rebellion created in the beginning. I will give them the war, the famine, the plague, the death that their rebellion in the garden gave birth to.”

He says, “If you rebel against me, what you are doing is you are contributing to the brokenness that brings things like conquest, war, famine, plague, and death.”

So he’s giving us the just fruits of our rebellion.

But when he does that throughout the Old Testament, when he allows the Israelites to be conquered, to be plagued by famine or disease or other things like that, the point is not, “I don’t love you anymore, so now I’m destroying you.”

The point is, “I am giving you what rebellion brings.”

When you rebel against the God of the universe, you are aligning yourself with the brokenness that creates these things. And so I’m giving you these things that your rebellion creates so that you can see this is where your rebellion leads.

Come back to the one who banishes conquest and instead brings peace. Who banishes war and instead brings love. Who banishes famine and instead brings abundance. Who banishes plague and instead brings health and restoration.

Who banishes death and instead brings life.

Warning Judgments

This is a repeating pattern all throughout the Old Testament. And not just that, but all throughout history, these are warning judgments.

These are judgments given not to destroy, but judgments given to bring God’s people to repentance.

But when he pours out these warning judgments, the important thing that you maybe noticed as I was saying all that is that it’s not really accurate to say that it’s something he is doing to them.

It is something he is allowing them to do to themselves.

The wrath of God most of the time takes shape as giving you what you think you want and then allowing you to suffer the horrific consequences of it.

That is true even of the ultimate judgment, the ultimate wrath of God.

Hell itself is ultimately a choice that we as rebellious humans make for ourselves. It is ultimately something we choose for ourselves.

We rebel against the Lord because we want to be separated from him. We want to go our own way. We want to rule ourselves.

Hell is a place that he gives to us where we get to be separated from him for all of eternity. We get to rule ourselves for all of eternity.

That’s kind of what John Milton was talking about in Paradise Lost when he wrote Paradise Lost. It’s an epic work in which Satan is kind of positioned as the protagonist. And yet Satan is presented as the most pathetic creature imaginable.

He says, “I would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.”

And he is given exactly what he wants. And then he spends all of eternity suffering.

Not because God is torturing him, but because to rule in hell is to suffer. To be eternally separated from God is to suffer.

He is giving Satan exactly what he dreamed of.

And it is the most devastating suffering imaginable.

And that same thing is true for every human who is with Satan in hell in the end. They are being given what they wanted.

And in the same way, when we rebel against the Lord, his covenant justice, his righteous wrath, his good judgment is he gives us exactly what we want and everything that comes with it.

And when he does that in a smaller sense, when he does that in a way that is meant ultimately to warn us, to bring us back, to draw us to repentance by showing us your rebellion leads to conquest, war, famine, disease, and death, when he does that in a kind of smaller sense throughout the Old Testament and all throughout history, the term that theologians give it is warning judgment.

So this is a repeating pattern of warning judgment.

We see it all throughout the Old Testament.

And now in the visions that John is experiencing, he is seeing these visions of that same pattern of warning judgment applied not just to ancient Israel, but now to all of humanity, to the entire world.

The Seals, Trumpets, and Bowls as Warning Judgments

Essentially, these visions of the seven seals and then the seven trumpets and the seven bowls—there’s a lot of stuff to talk about there—but at the very, very core, the basic idea is that so much of what we see around us, so much of the suffering we see around us, so much of the tragedy that we see around us, so much of the atrocities that we see around us are not just random bad things happening.

They are God lovingly, mercifully giving us the warning judgments that he gave to ancient Israel to show humanity, “This is what comes from your rebellion.”

The goal of these seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls is ultimately to draw rebellious humanity back to himself, to repentance.

But the big picture in all of this is that all of these things, all of the horrific sufferings that these seven churches have experienced, they are not out of God’s control.

They are under his sovereign control. They are on his sovereign leash.

The human evil that has been inflicted on the seven churches through the pagan government of Rome and so on and so forth is ultimately rooted in God’s loving warning judgments.

How Apocalyptic Language Works

Another really important thing that we have to understand about these seven seals in Revelation 6 and 7, and the same thing applies to the trumpets and to the bowls, is that this is written in apocalyptic language.

You cannot understand Revelation if you don’t understand the basics of how apocalyptic literature worked.

That is why there are a million different interpretations of Revelation that all totally contradict each other, but all the preachers and teachers pouring them out are equally confident. So it’s impossible to tell who’s actually right.

Actually, it’s not impossible to tell who’s actually right if we have a basic understanding of ancient apocalyptic literature and Old Testament prophetic literature.

And so Revelation 6 and 7 is using the kind of language that is used both in the Old Testament prophets and in the ancient Jewish apocalyptic writings.

They use what you could call cosmic language. They use what you could call cosmic catastrophe language.

What that means is they will describe massive historical judgments on specific empires like Babylon or Edom or Egypt. They’ll describe the conquest of Babylon by a bigger, stronger empire. They’ll describe the destruction of the empire of Edom. They’ll describe the plagues poured out on Egypt and so on and so forth in a very specific type of cosmic language, catastrophic language.

They’ll describe historical catastrophes, like big horrifying historical things like the destruction of the Jerusalem temple or the exile of the Israelites, the exile of the Judahites, and so on and so forth, in this really flowery language, this cosmological language, this catastrophic language that sounds like it’s about the end of the world, but is actually referring to an empire getting conquered or a king being deposed and replaced with another king from a different family.

They’ll talk about the stars falling from the sky and other stuff like that. And what it’ll be referring to is a longtime, very powerful king got killed by one of his eunuchs and then somebody else took up his throne.

And so if you don’t know about how apocalyptic literature works, then you would read that and think, like, okay, well, this has to be something about the end of the world because the stars have never fallen from the sky, right?

But the seven churches of Revelation that John is writing to, they were really steeped in apocalyptic literature. They knew perfectly well how apocalyptic literature worked.

And so they know that just because something sounds like the end of the world doesn’t necessarily mean it is talking about the end of the world.

But at exactly the same time, both apocalyptic and Old Testament prophetic literature absolutely do talk about the literal end of the world.

Both Old Testament prophetic and apocalyptic literature talk about the literal final judgment. They talk about the literal ultimate collapse of this fallen and broken world order and the ultimate renewal of the world at the return of the true King, Jesus.

And so it’s really important that we grasp that the language that Revelation uses was super common in Old Testament prophetic literature and in ancient Near Eastern apocalyptic literature, and that it could refer either to the literal end of the world or to fairly mundane historical events that it describes in these flowery cosmological catastrophe language.

Cosmic Catastrophe Language and the Seven Churches

Essentially what’s happening here is that the first-century Christians and Jews had grown up hearing apocalyptic literature that described the fall of empires, the burning of cities, the destruction of temples, and so on and so forth in books like Daniel.

Daniel is an Old Testament apocalyptic writing. It is a divinely inspired apocalyptic writing.

Most apocalyptic writings were not in the Bible, but Daniel and Revelation, they’re apocalyptic writings that are in the Bible.

So they’ve heard Daniel describe fairly mundane things like the destruction of an empire, the death of a king, the burning of a city, the destruction of a temple, and so on and so forth.

And they’ve read books like 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and so on and so forth, which describe stuff like this using this cosmological catastrophe language.

And so they’ve grown up reading these things and hearing these things and knowing sometimes this language is about the literal end of the world. Other times this language is about a king getting deposed and replaced or something like that.

And so none of the people in the seven churches that originally received Revelation would ever have read passages like the stars falling from the sky as literally meaning stars fell from the sky.

And they wouldn’t have interpreted them as, like, asteroids or meteor showers or something like that.

At the same time, they know it’s not just flowery language. They know that there is something happening, that this refers to something important.

It refers to something meaningful.

This language, whether it is talking about the literal end of the world or it is talking about some kind of relatively mundane event in cosmological catastrophe language, in any case, it is talking about God decisively intervening in history for something.

God is decisively intervening in history to carry his plan to redeem humanity and restore our world forward.

They see this language of cosmological catastrophe and they know that it’s talking about the fact that God has the power to overturn an apparently unshakable world order.

Everyone thought Babylon was indestructible, and then God brought Babylon to its knees. Everyone thought Persia was an eternal kingdom, and then God crushed Persia into the dust.

And everyone thought Rome was a never-ending, all-powerful, godlike empire.

But they knew God is going to bring this world order, this beastly order, to nothing.

More Than One Possible Interpretation

But what all of this means is that there’s a range of ways that you can interpret Revelation 6 and 7. There’s a range of ways that you can interpret the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls.

I am going to tell you what I very sincerely think is the best way to understand it. But it is important to know this is not the only possible way you can interpret it.

People who interpret it a little differently are not stupid, right?

I love David Jeremiah. I disagree with the way that he interprets Revelation and just about all of the prophetic passages about the end and so on and so forth.

But David Jeremiah is great. He is a smart man. He is a faithful teacher. He is sincere. He is a genuine servant of the Lord.

So I’m not throwing any shade on people like David Jeremiah who interpret this very, very differently than the interpretation I’m going to give.

There are, I think, full-on hucksters. There are, I think, genuine false teachers. I mention John Hagee and Jonathan Cahn a lot. There’s plenty others that we could talk about.

Jack Van Impe, I think, probably counts as a false teacher.

I think Hal Lindsey was a good dude. I think he was sincere. But I think that his imagination was stronger than his actual, I don’t know, devotion to studying the Scriptures and stuff like that.

So, you know, I would not count him as a false teacher or anything like that. I think he got it very, very wrong.

But there are plenty of good preachers, teachers, theologians who interpret this differently, and they actually have a reasonable argument because the language John uses can refer either to the literal end of the world or to historical events that it’s describing in this apocalyptic cosmic catastrophe language.

And both of those two interpretations are legitimate.

However, I think there is an interpretation that works much better than all of the other ones.

And that is the one that I am going to give you.

If someone else says something different than this, that does not mean that they are a liar. It’s very likely that they have also done their homework and that they are running with a different, totally possible, legitimate, valid way of interpreting these things.

Revelation Is Addressed to the Seven Churches

But the important thing that we need to understand as we jump into all of this is that the seven churches have grown up, they have spent their entire Christian lives hearing and reading the ancient Near Eastern apocalyptic literature that Revelation is modeled on and written to be like.

And they have seen events during their lifetimes be described in this apocalyptic literature in really flowery, really ornate ways that sound like the end of the world.

There are predictions in apocalyptic literature that talk about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and they describe the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, which happened in AD 70, in ways that sound like the literal end of the world.

But they’re not talking about the end of the world. They’re talking about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

They’ve heard about the death of high priests in ways that sounded like the literal end of the world, but it’s not the literal end of the world. It’s the death of the high priest, and so on and so forth.

And so they’ve seen this language used in two radically different ways.

The purpose of the book of Revelation is what?

It’s to shepherd the seven churches through a problem they are having right now.

They are dealing, we’ve talked about this, they are dealing with a form of the beast right now. They are dealing with a form of Babylon right now. They are dealing with a form of the man of lawlessness right now.

They’re dealing with a form of the great prostitute right now.

And on and on and on and on.

And so they need guidance on what it looks like to deal with these things today.

And so the phrase I’ve been repeating is that Revelation is 90% about things happening in the first century and about 10% about things that were in the future when John wrote.

And that’s very important because that feeds into the next really important thing that we have to understand as we read about the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls.

The Seals, Trumpets, and Bowls Tell the Same Story

And that is that it is almost certainly the case that the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls are all one thing.

The seven seals are the seven trumpets, and they are the seven bowls.

The seven trumpets are the seven seals, and they are the seven bowls.

The seven bowls are the seven seals, and they are the seven trumpets.

It is almost certainly the case that these are three different visions describing the same sequence of events.

The seals and the trumpets and the bowls, they are all narrating the entire history of what John calls the last age, the last days, the last hour.

John says in 1 John that it is the last hour. These are the last days. These are the last age.

Peter says the same thing in his letters. He says we are living in the last age, the last times.

Jesus himself repeatedly says you are in the last hour.

Peter says in the book of Acts in his sermon at Pentecost, you know, the Lord prophesied in Joel that in the last days I will pour my Spirit out on all flesh, on all of my people.

And he says this is what you just witnessed.

He’s saying you are in the last age. You are in the end times.

What the Bible Means by the End Times

So it’s really important to understand that actually biblically speaking, the end times is not a seven-year period at the very, very end.

The end times is the entire history of the world after the coming of Jesus.

The end times began when Jesus came to earth. The end times began when he went to the cross in our place. The end times began when he rose from the grave in victory.

The end times began when he ascended into heaven and then sent us the Holy Spirit to empower us to carry out his mission.

And so it is absolutely true that the seals, the trumpets, the bowls, they are a narrative of the end times using these different images, but they’re a narrative of the end times that span at least 2,000 years so far.

The end times might span 3,000 years. They might span 4,000 years. We might not even be close to the return of Jesus.

20,000 years from now, he may still not have returned yet because our work may not be done yet. We just don’t know.

It could be tomorrow, or it could be 2 million years from now.

But the seals and the trumpets and the bowls are narrating the entire history of the last days, the last age between when King Jesus came in his first coming to redeem us through the cross and when he will come again in his second coming to judge and restore all things, ending with the final judgment itself in seal six.

And in exactly the same way, the seven trumpets narrate the entire history of these last days, last hours, last age, the end times between when King Jesus came to redeem by the cross and when he comes again to restore, this time using different images and metaphors to make different points.

And then the bowls once again narrate the whole story of these last days, last age between when King Jesus came the first time to redeem through the cross and when he comes again to judge and restore all things, ending with the final judgment.

This time using different metaphors, different images, different symbols altogether to make a different set of points.

So we watch the literal end of the world play out several different times throughout the book of Revelation from several different angles.

Seals six and seven are one of those cases, but they’re just one of them.

When we get to seal number six, it’s going to be a vision of the end, the final victory of Jesus that’s going to be revisited over and over throughout Revelation from another angle and another angle and another angle.

Revelation Does Not Give Us a Detailed Timeline

So what we’re seeing here in these seven seals is a narrative of all of history leading up to the return of Jesus, starting with the coming of Jesus.

It lays out the normal conditions of what this age, these last days are like as the fallen and broken world wages war on us until the return of Jesus.

We see that in the form of the four horsemen.

The seals show us the martyrs in heaven interacting and beseeching the Lord, imploring the Lord on our behalf in heaven in the fifth seal.

We jump forward in the sixth seal to see the great day of wrath and restoration. And then in the seventh seal, it actually starts over again and it tells us the story of history again in the form of the seven trumpets.

So, ironically, the seventh seal is the seven trumpets, which is wild.

So essentially, John says in the seventh seal, hey, let’s rewind the videotape and let’s watch it again, but this time let’s look at a slightly different aspect.

And so John actually is deliberately disrupting any attempt that we might make to try to form a timeline out of Revelation.

If you can form a timeline of events with a lot of specificity out of Revelation, it means that you have wildly misinterpreted Revelation.

If you can form a really detailed chart that says all these real specific things that are going to happen out of Revelation, then you have, I think, really significantly misinterpreted Revelation because it does not exist to help us build a timeline.

It does not exist to help us build a chart.

And we can see that in the fact that the world actually just keeps ending in Revelation.

When we get to seal number six, it uses the exact imagery of the day of the Lord. The cosmos collapses, the sky is rolled up, the mountains are removed, and then in seal seven, there is silence.

And then the trumpets start everything over again.

And so the world ends and then there are seven more images of judgment.

How is that even possible?

It’s not possible if you’re trying to read Revelation as a kind of chronological account.

Apocalyptic literature just did not work that way.

The book of Daniel is not chronological. The book of Revelation is not chronological.

The book of Daniel does not exist for you to be able to chart out a bunch of hyperspecific events. And the book of Revelation does not exist for you to be able to chart out a bunch of hyperspecific events.

They are giving us images that help us understand the essence of how God is accomplishing his mission to redeem humanity and restore our world from the time of Jesus all the way through the end, from one camera angle to another camera angle to another camera angle.

What Is the Great Tribulation?

And 90% of that narrative takes place not in the distant future, right before the return of Jesus.

90% of that narrative takes place right there in the first century.

Why do I say that?

It’s actually really simple and I think really funny.

It’s because John repeatedly frames the things that he is talking about in Revelation as descriptions of something he calls the great tribulation.

Now, this is a very misunderstood concept.

The great tribulation is not a special seven-year period at the very end of time.

That is not a concept that is in the Bible.

Very similarly, the rapture is not a concept that is in the Bible.

Now, could there be some special seven-year period at the end of time in which there’s a unique kind of tribulation?

Yeah, sure, there could be.

Could there be a rapture?

Of course, there could be.

These concepts both came from dreams and visions by Christians through the ages, like in the 1800s and stuff like that, not from the Bible itself.

And God sometimes reveals things to us through dreams and visions.

So it’s entirely possible that the teenage girl who had the dream that gave birth to the concept of the rapture was having a divinely given dream and vision.

So the rapture may be real.

It’s just we learned about it from this dream or vision.

I would say personally I think that’s unlikely, but it is absolutely possible.

So again, people who interpret Revelation in ways that factor the rapture in, they’re not false teachers. That is a potentially legitimate way to interpret this.

However, it’s not what this is talking about.

John Was Already in the Tribulation

The great tribulation that John is repeatedly referring to is not a special seven-year period that happens after the church has been raptured up out of the world and then a special tribulation is poured out on the people who were left behind.

That’s just not a concept that’s in the Bible.

When John talks about the great tribulation, he is talking about something that was happening in the first century.

First things first, we need to remember chapter 1.

John says in Revelation 1:

“I John, your brother and partner with you in the oppression, Kingdom, and perseverance in Christ Jesus, was on the isle that is called Patmos because of God’s Word and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” — Revelation 1:9, WEB

He says, “I’m your brother in tribulation. I am your brother in the tribulation. I am your brother in this great tribulation that we are going through.”

John and the seven churches are already experiencing the great tribulation.

He’s experiencing the tribulation right now in the form of the exile on the island of Patmos.

They are experiencing the tribulation in the fact that church leaders like Antipas have been killed out of faithfulness to Jesus, and so on and so forth.

It’s not a special seven-year period at the very end.

It’s a reference to the things they are going through right then and there at that exact moment.

The Great Tribulation Spans the Age of the Church

And yet I think it’s actually even more than that because here in Revelation 6 and 7, one of the elders around the throne looks at the multitude of the worshipers from every tribe and tongue and nation.

That would include Antipas the martyr, the church leader who was killed by the Roman government. It would include many of the apostles who were dead by the time John has written Revelation. It would include countless of the people who’ve been martyred from the seven churches.

And the elder says they have come out of the great tribulation.

The elder is describing this entire multitude of believers gathered around the throne of God in his heavenly throne room from every nation already there standing in heaven.

He’s not talking about one tiny group from this tiny slice of time, either some special seven-year period at the end or the first century itself.

This is, remember, all of redeemed humanity through all of time, past, present, and future.

And so you will one day be among this multitude that the elder is talking about.

Of course, this is a vision. This is figurative. This is metaphorical.

The point is all of redeemed humanity, the entirety of God’s people, past, present, and future, who have gone on to be with the Lord, who have finished the great spiritual war that is playing out in this fallen and broken world, and have gone on to spend eternity in God’s presence, have come out of the great tribulation.

Which means that whenever John talks about the great tribulation, in the same way when Jesus uses that term, the great tribulation, like in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and so on and so forth, I think I may have my verse address mixed up a little bit here, but when they talk about the great tribulation, it seems to be talking about the normal age-long pressure that is on God’s people that climaxes at the end.

And it’s the normal age-long suffering and struggle that makes up the entirety of the last age, the last hour, the last days that’ll ultimately climax at the very end.

And so I think there’s a sense in which you could say that the great tribulation refers to all of the attacks that the world and the serpent working through the world have waged on God’s people during this final age between the first coming of King Jesus and the second coming of King Jesus.

And that means that the great tribulation is the path of the church anytime they are under the thumb of the beast in whatever form it takes, not some distinct future thing that some believers are going to be raptured out of.

The Seals Describe a Recurring Pattern

And that means what?

That means each time John reminds us once again, hey, this great tribulation looked like this. This great tribulation looked like that.

The great tribulation looks like these seven seals. It looks like these seven trumpets. It looks like these seven bowls.

He is describing what?

He is primarily describing these specific things that happened in the first century under the Roman form of the beast, the Roman form of Babylon, the Roman form of the man of lawlessness, the Roman form of the great prostitute.

But it also applies to God’s people in every age after that.

And so in some sense, we are all experiencing the seven seals in some form. We are all experiencing the seven trumpets in some form. We are all experiencing these seven bowls in some form.

With the very notable exception that we are absolutely not experiencing the sixth seal, which is the literal final victory of King Jesus over the devil and the forces of darkness.

We have not experienced that in our lifetimes.

The first-century seven churches did not experience that in their lifetime.

But on the baseline level, the seven seals are describing a recurring pattern throughout history that ultimately leads up to the literal end and the return of King Jesus.

Seal One: The White Horse of Conquest

He describes seal number one as a white horse, a rider on a white horse, a conqueror bent on conquest.

He’s describing the white horse with a language that is reminiscent of conquest.

Now, it’s really important: this is an image. This is a symbol. This is a metaphor.

It’s really important to understand the seals themselves are not necessarily specific predictions for the most part. The trumpets themselves are not necessarily specific predictions. The bowls themselves are not necessarily specific predictions.

The Bible is filled with specific prophetic predictions.

The point is not that the Bible doesn’t predict the future. It absolutely does.

The Bible has accurately predicted the future literally thousands of times, which is actually mathematically impossible. That is one very good reason to believe that the Bible truly is what Jesus said it was when he said that it is God’s divinely inspired Word.

So the Bible absolutely predicts the future very frequently in certain books and writings.

But the seals, the trumpets, the bowls themselves, they are images that paint a picture of the future that is coming.

They are not necessarily specific predictions about the future.

So there is not necessarily literally going to be a rider on a white horse.

Conquest Through the Eyes of the Seven Churches

What is seal number one talking about?

Well, it’s really important to put yourself in the shoes of the seven churches themselves, a first-century group of Christians specifically in Asia Minor, because it actually really matters that the seven churches are in Asia Minor.

The way that these visions are interpreted changes actually pretty significantly when you remember that these visions were initially given to a group of churches who lived in Asia Minor.

To first-century Asia Minor Christian ears, the conqueror bent on conquest language that John is using to describe the white horse would remind them of a few things.

One thing that it would remind them of is Rome’s constant expansion campaigns.

Rome was an empire, and empires do something called imperialism.

And they conquer other smaller, weaker nations, tribes, and take their land, enslave their people, seize their resources, and so on and so forth.

That is how the Roman Empire became an empire.

They conquered one independent state, nation, territory, whatever, after another until it came to the point where they had so much land that the sun never really set on the Roman Empire.

No matter where the sun was in the sky, it was always hanging over some plot of Roman imperial land.

So they would immediately remember Rome marching through all these different towns, villages, and so forth.

Legions of soldiers marching, killing, conquering, stealing, destroying.

The Threat of Parthia

And at exactly the same time, they would remember the other side of that coin because eventually Rome wasn’t the only bully on the playground.

Eventually there were other big, bad, scary nations, empires, powers out there.

And one of them was Parthia.

Now the rider on the white horse is not necessarily meant to be directly, literally a reference to Parthia.

This is not necessarily directly, literally a prediction that Parthia is going to invade Rome or conquer part of the Roman territories or anything like that.

But immediately, when the seven churches in Asia Minor on the eastern border of Rome heard the language of this rider on a white horse, like a conqueror bent on conquest, they would not only think of Rome’s imperialist campaigns, they would also think of the threat of conquest, the threat of war with one of their bordering neighbors that constantly hovered over them.

If you lived anywhere near the eastern border of Rome, you spent your whole life afraid that you were going to wake up one day and the Parthian legions will have breached the eastern border and marched into your city.

John uses language that actually very specifically would have reminded them of the Parthian army.

Parthia had almost become like a boogeyman for Rome and so many other places.

They were famous for their mounted archers. They were famous for the raids that they would carry out with archers just laying waste, turning the sky black with arrows, just eviscerating whole cities.

And so people would actually often refer to the threat of conquest or invasion by Parthia by referring to the bow.

And so you could talk about, like, the threat of the bow. The bow is coming.

And people would literally hear that and they would hear, “Parthia is coming.”

The False Peace of Rome

And so if you are the seven churches there in Asia Minor that John is writing to, you live under an empire that is built on conquest, that is built on expansionism.

Rome called that the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.

It was a kind of false peace that was built on conquest and blood.

But at exactly the same time, you now live in an empire that is facing the comeuppance of its own expansionism because now other nations are getting stronger and they are starting to take aim at Rome.

Rome is starting to be dished out what they have dished out. They’re starting to receive what they have poured out.

And so Rome is kind of a form of this first horseman and rider that the seven churches are used to, but a new kind of horseman and rider has been given a crown.

John says the crown has been given.

That is the divine passive, so to speak.

God is permitting a new horseman and rider to go conquer.

He is permitting a new horseman and rider to go sow chaos.

And that means that this is not random chaos.

This is chaos that the Lord is allowing, that he is giving, that he is unlocking and allowing to go have its day.

The Lord is judging the Roman Empire, and he is judging rebellious humanity in a sense, by allowing the lust for power of conquering armies like the Parthians to go and do their worst.

The Horsemen of Zechariah

We see that exact same image in Zechariah chapter 1 and chapter 6.

He paints this image of horses and horsemen patrolling the earth as agents of God’s work in the world, agents of God’s activity in the nations.

He does something.

He allows a nation to be conquered. He allows a nation to gain power. He allows a nation to kind of wither and crumble.

And he uses the language of horses and horsemen patrolling the nations as sort of an image of his work in raising up nations and tearing down nations, empowering nations to conquer others and stripping other nations of their power and allowing them to be conquered.

In other words, the constant threat of conquest from Parthia is not just an unfortunate fact of life when you live on the eastern border of Rome.

The constant threat of conquest by Parthia is part of the way that God is working in the world.

He’s allowing the idolatrous and wicked and unjust nations like Rome to reap the fruit of their imperialist violence.

He is permitting the human drive for conquest in the form of Parthia and other nations like that as a judgment against the conquest empire that is Rome, that worships power and uses violence to subjugate others.

And so if you are one of these seven churches that’s been trying to compromise with Rome as a way of protecting yourself from Rome, what you’re going to hear when you hear this vision of the first horseman, the first seal, is don’t even bother trying to cozy up to the empire.

This very empire that you are tempted to cozy up to as a way of protecting yourself could be conquered by another at any time.

And then all of your cozying up will have been for nothing.

He says, “Rome cannot make you safe. Only I can make you safe. You will not be safe unless I hold back the armies of Parthia and others.”

Rome can’t protect you.

I will protect you. I will give you the protection that you need.

And so if you are being attacked by Rome, it is because right now you need to be attacked by Rome. I will sustain you through that attack, and I will bring that attack to an end when the time is right.

That is seal number one.

Seal Two: The Red Horse of War and Strife

Seal number two, John describes a red horse, like a rider on a red horse, and he uses kind of the language of warfare, and he uses the language of civil disorder, civil strife.

He uses the language of a nation kind of coming apart at the seams, disintegrating into itself.

This is really important because the Roman Empire prided itself on the Roman peace, the Pax Romana.

But that peace was only actually possible because they turned it into a police state. They turned it into a surveillance state.

You couldn’t do anything without Rome knowing about it. You couldn’t do anything without Rome’s permission.

So there was constant bloodshed in the streets. Roman soldiers striking people down for tiny infractions to keep people in line.

The Roman peace was built on the fact that the boot of the Roman government was on the neck of every single resident of Rome.

And in the same way, the Roman peace was built only on the fact that Rome had preemptively struck all of the nations it felt could potentially pose a threat to it.

If your nation started to get prosperous enough that you could potentially become a threat to Rome, they would attack you.

They would invade you. They would conquer you.

You would lose your independence. You would lose your sovereignty.

And so the Roman peace was built on a sea of war.

It was built on a sea of conquest. It was built on a sea of theft, of imperialism, of suppression, and so on and so forth.

And as a result, it was not actually that peaceful.

It was not actually that stable.

Rome’s Civil Wars and Political Chaos

And there were constant power struggles within the Roman government.

There were constant civil wars with one very powerful and influential politician leading a revolt against other powerful, influential politicians.

You think that our political system is chaotic.

Rome’s was infinity times worse.

In the year 69, there was what they called the Year of the Four Emperors.

There was essentially a civil war in which there were four different people who all were vying for power as the god-king of Rome, and on and on and on.

And these seven churches in Asia Minor are constantly caught in the crossfire of these ethnic and civic and political and so on and so forth battles that are playing out in Rome.

They are constantly being targeted by this group but not that group, this group but not that group.

Opposed by this group but favored by that group, and so on and so forth.

And so they are constantly under the temptation to compromise with Roman idolatry, to cozy up with one of the groups so that one of these groups will protect them.

The Temptation to Seek Protection From Wicked Powers

We Christians have that same problem, right?

We will literally glom ourselves on to wicked men, wicked politicians, and so on and so forth.

We’ll say, “Yeah, I know they’re evil. I know they’re—but you know, well, they’re on our side. They’ll look out for us. They’ll look out for our interests. They’ll protect us.”

No.

That’s just never really how it works.

Glomming on to wicked men never actually works out for the people of God.

The wicked men never protect us from the enemies. The wicked men just drag us down to their wickedness.

It didn’t work with Saul.

It won’t work for us today.

But these seven churches, they’re under constant temptation to compromise in order to cozy up to one of the factions to protect themselves from being targeted.

But into all of this, these visions say this war, this strife that’s all around you is not just random chaos that you need to compromise your faith in order to survive.

No.

This is the Lord’s own work.

The Sword as Warning Judgment

The Lord is using this as a warning judgment.

It’s like he says in Leviticus 26. He says, “If you are unfaithful to my covenant, I will bring the sword on you as a warning judgment. I will draw you back to myself. I will draw you to repentance by giving you the consequences of your unfaithfulness.”

“The sword will come on you. Conquerors will come to conquer you.”

In Ezekiel 14, he says, “My four dreadful judgments, the sword, famine, wild beasts, and plagues.”

He’s saying, “If you are unfaithful to my covenant, I will give you the consequences of unfaithfulness. Your rebellion brings violence, it brings famine, it brings plague, and so forth.”

And so, when you are unfaithful, you will experience those things.

The goal is to draw you to repentance.

And now here in the same way, he says, “The red horseman was given the power to take peace from the earth.”

Peace turns to strife.

Stability turns to social disintegration.

God is essentially removing the restraints that he’s been placing on the nations so that rather than being relatively stable, they completely fall apart by their own chaotic appetites.

The point here is very simple.

The fallen and broken world has rejected the Prince of Peace.

Therefore, they are rejecting peace itself.

God’s judging the world by allowing them to throw peace by the wayside and suffer the horrific consequences of chaos and strife.

God Hands Rebellious Humanity Over to Its Own Desires

This is the same logic that we see in Romans chapter 1.

Paul says that God doesn’t cause people to sin, but he hands people over to their sin.

He doesn’t cause people to do wicked things, but he allows people to do their wicked desires.

He hands people over to their own idolatry, their own wickedness, their own injustice.

And as a result, they destroy themselves.

His judgment, his wrath, takes the form of allowing people who rebel against him to destroy themselves in slow motion.

And that means that if you are one of these seven churches reading this letter, what you’re going to hear in all of this is, “Look, I know there’s chaos all around you, but you don’t need to panic.”

This is not a sign that God has lost control.

This is part of what God is doing by his providential control to bring lasting peace, to bring the restoration you’ve been waiting for.

That’s seal number two.

Seal Three: The Black Horse of Scarcity and Poverty

John describes seal number three as a black horse.

And he describes it with the language of economic scarcity. He describes it with a language of famine, of radical poverty.

So Rome, like all empires, really prided itself on its wealth. It really prided itself on its power.

It seemed like it had a bottomless reserve of resources and treasures and a bottomless reserve of power.

No one could stand against them.

But the only way it could acquire that bottomless reserve of wealth and power was through what?

Was through violent conquest.

Exploiting the poor, exploiting the enslaved, exploiting the conquered.

The wealth of Babylon in the form of Rome this time around was built on systems that starved some people in order to enrich other people.

This was not a meritocracy where if you worked really hard, you could make it.

This was a full-on oligarchy.

That’s actually probably not even a strong enough word.

But this was the rule of the powerful over the powerless.

This was the rule of people who had absolute power over people who didn’t even have the right to get up to the bottom rung of the ladder.

The powerful became powerful by plundering people with less power.

That was what the entire system of Rome and all of the Babylons of history, all of the beasts of history, has been built on.

Rome’s System Eats Itself

And here in this vision, we’re essentially getting a vision of God allowing this system to eat itself.

Because the war and conquest that ultimately created that unimaginable wealth for the Babylon beast that was Rome eventually disrupts supply chains, right?

Political corruption grows up in that system. Greed rose up in that system, and as a result prices get all distorted.

Things become inaccessible.

The poor and the lower classes experience famine and extreme inflation.

At the same time, elites and merchants still have access to luxuries like oil and wine.

So one piece of bread costs a whole day’s wages, but luxuries like oil and wine are still flowing freely for the people who have access to afford them, and so on and so forth.

John says this is not just random misfortune or injustice.

This is actually part of God’s warning judgment against this Babylonian beastly world system in rebellion against him.

The Covenant Curse of Scarcity

This is once again a reference to Leviticus 26, the covenant curses, the warning judgments.

He says, “If you are unfaithful to my covenant, you will eat but not be satisfied. Ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight.”

He says in Ezekiel 4, they will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair.

The point being scarcity, poverty, starvation is a result of our rebellion against the true King.

So when we rebel against the true King, he gives us what our rebellion brings forth.

This is an image.

Remember, this is not a specific prediction of a specific event necessarily, but this is an image of God allowing the radically unjust system of Rome to fall apart from the inside.

It creates such crushing inequality that eventually it collapses.

That’s a fact.

You look through all of history, when there is extreme inequality, when there’s a radically poor subsector and a radically rich subsector and very, very little in the middle, that causes nations to collapse.

It causes communities to fall apart.

What the Black Horse Says to the Seven Churches

And so if you’re part of the seven churches and you are hearing this letter read aloud, what you’re going to hear is, listen, you are going to live through recurring episodes of scarcity like in this vision, like this horseman.

Don’t panic.

This is part of the Lamb’s judgment against the beast.

This is part of the warning judgments that the Lamb is giving to draw the rebellious humanity that is currently under the sway of the beast back to himself.

He says this hardship, this struggle, this scarcity, this starvation, this is not divine rejection.

This is not God’s wrath being poured out on you.

This is the price that faithfulness is going to require from you.

If you are faithful, you will not be able to be part of that elite that accesses the oil and the wine while everybody else, including you, can barely afford bread with a whole day’s wages.

And at the same time, he says to the churches that are complacent, that are compromising with Rome, the churches like Laodicea that have compromised, that have started to worship the Roman emperor and the Roman Empire, worship the gods of Rome in order to gain access to the wealth, the oil, and the wine of Rome:

Your luxury is rooted in a system that God is actively judging.

Your wealth and power—it’s not that wealth and power are bad—but your wealth and power right now have come from selling out the Lamb in order to access the wealth of the beast.

He says, “Turn back to the Lamb.”

That is seal number three.

Seal Four: The Pale Horse of Death

He describes seal number four as a pale horse.

And he just uses these kind of overlapping images of death, uses images of war, images of famine, images of disease, things that thin out the population, things that cause just vast portions of the population to disappear.

This is something that Rome was experiencing right then and there at that time.

This is something these seven churches were watching play out in Rome at that exact moment as John was writing this.

There were constantly famines somewhere in the Roman Empire. There were constantly plagues of disease happening somewhere in the empire.

There were constantly whole cities where a third of the city, a quarter of the city, other things like that were just wiped out by disease.

This vision of the fourth seal takes that image that they would have been intimately familiar with, and it uses it as an example once again of God’s warning judgments to draw rebellious humanity back to him.

The Four Dreadful Judgments

He is once again using the vocabulary, the imagery that comes from Leviticus and Ezekiel describing the covenant blessings and covenant curses.

Ezekiel 14 says:

“For thus says the Lord Yahweh: ‘How much more when I send my four severe judgments on Jerusalem, the sword, the famine, the harmful animals, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and animal!’” — Ezekiel 14:21, WEB

We see the same exact thing here in Revelation 6 and 7.

We see war and violence, the sword. We see economic collapse in the form of famine. We see disease, plagues.

We see the breakdown of the order of creation, the breakdown of security.

You can’t even travel because you’ll be attacked by wild beasts in cities that have been just emptied of their people through these famines and plagues and invasions and so forth.

These are general symbols of the breakdown of every aspect of God’s good design for the world, not necessarily specific predictions.

He then personifies death itself in all of these things.

He uses Hades, which was a reference to the realm of the dead in the kind of ancient Greco-Roman imagination.

When they talk about Hades, they’re just sort of using an image that was familiar to them to sort of describe the realm of the dead and specifically the condemned.

So it’s like Hades is trailing behind all of these things.

The point being that the state of the fallen and broken world as the seven churches were witnessing it is an outworking of God’s covenant judgment.

It is an outworking of his warning judgments, just like he warned in the Old Testament, that this is not random.

But in a sense the horseman and the rider was given the power to wreak this kind of havoc.

Once again, God is letting the consequences of human rebellion play out.

The Four Horsemen Summarize the Last Days

And when you take these first four seals together, these four horsemen together, it’s like a summary of the entirety of these last days as we’ve experienced them so far.

From the time of Jesus to now, we have seen constant conquest, constant war, constant scarcity, starvation, poverty, death.

This is what life looks like in a fallen and broken world that is in rebellion against its Creator and King, that is waging war all the more intensely now against the King and his people.

But very importantly, the vision says that God is not allowing the consequences of human rebellion to bring absolute destruction yet.

He says death was allowed to reign over a fourth of the earth.

A fourth of the earth was taken.

Now, does that mean that literally a quarter of the earth is going to be killed at some point?

Probably not. No.

You know, there are some people who have interpreted this to be a reference to the Black Plague in the medieval times, but that’s probably not what this is talking about.

The point is a fourth of the earth is a lot.

That’s severe.

If a fourth of the earth dies, that’s a major problem.

But a fourth of the earth is not everyone.

It’s a partial judgment.

This is very similar to when we get to these seven trumpets. At a certain point, it gets to a point it says that a third of the earth was struck.

Once again, a third of the earth is very severe.

It’s a problem, but it’s partial.

It’s not an annihilation.

It’s not a destruction.

It’s a warning.

The Horsemen Are a Warning to Repent

The Lord is using these warning judgments to warn rebellious humanity, saying, “Come back.”

These wars, famines, plagues, and death, they are what happens when you rebel against the Creator, the Designer, and the good created design for the world.

The world falls apart.

And so if you are one of the seven churches and you are reading this, what you’re going to hear is do not panic at the war, famine, plagues, death, and so forth that you see all around you.

This doesn’t mean you’ve been abandoned by the Lamb.

It just means you are still awaiting the return of the Lamb.

You are still awaiting the enthronement of the Lamb.

We are still awaiting the final judgment where the Lamb puts an end to all of these things and makes everything right again.

And so the question that hangs over all of this is, as this happens, whose side are you on?

Especially if you’re a church like Smyrna.

This says you have chosen the side of the Lamb, and as a result you are suffering immensely at the hands of the nations, but the nations will be judged and refined for your sake.

If you’re a church like Laodicea and the other churches that have compromised with Rome, that have jumped ship, jumped in bed with the idolatry, the wickedness, the injustice of Rome, this says your comfort is unbelievably fragile.

This empire you’ve gotten in bed with is literally on its way to Hades.

That is seal number four.

Seal Five: The Cry of the Martyrs

The vision John has of seal number five describes it as a kind of cry by the martyrs.

It gives us another glimpse behind the curtain of all of these things that are happening as the beast, as Babylon, as Rome is persecuting the people of God.

This vision of the fifth seal lifts up the curtain and shows us what is happening behind the scenes.

These seven churches and all of the first-century churches, they’ve already been experiencing imprisonment and slander and exclusion and marginalization, sometimes even torture and execution because of their faithfulness to King Jesus.

We talked already about Revelation chapter 2, Antipas, probably a church leader in Pergamum.

He says, “He was my faithful witness who was put to death in your city where Satan lives.”

He was martyred for the faith.

And he’s probably just one example out of many.

John has been exiled because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

They’re being tortured, persecuted, marginalized, excluded, even killed for their faithfulness.

So these churches know people whose story fits into verse 9, fits into the cry of the martyrs gathered around the throne of the Lord.

“How Long, O Lord?”

The martyrs are crying out, “When are you going to act to avenge our blood? When are you going to put an end to this brokenness? When are you going to put an end to the destruction that this fallen and broken world is pouring out on us?”

“When are you going to put an end to Babylon’s persecution of your people? The beast’s persecution of your people? When are you going to put an end to Rome’s torment of your beloved people?”

It’s asking the question, why is all of this happening to us?

It’s asking the same question the seven churches have been asking.

They’ve been asking, why is all of this suffering and persecution happening to us?

Why is the Lord allowing all of this to happen to us?

And the answer that seal number five gives is because this is how we win.

Suffering Is How the Lamb Conquers Through His People

Seal number five says, “Your suffering and persecution is how King Jesus defeats the beast, defeats Babylon, defeats the great prostitute, defeats the false usurper serpent king.”

Your suffering and persecution is how the Lamb overcomes the world.

It is how the Shepherd gathers rebellious humanity back to himself in faith and repentance.

There’s a really weird phrase here in the vision in seal number five.

It says, “Until the full number are killed.”

It’s painting a picture of kind of this idea that there’s a divinely known quota of the martyrs.

A divine quota of how many of his people are going to be killed for the faith.

Now, does that mean that there is literally a quota that God is like, “Okay, there’s going to be 8 billion 200-something martyrs killed for the faith and then the Lord will return”?

No.

This is an image, not a literal statement about mathematics.

The point is God has a very specific purpose in martyrdom.

He has a specific purpose in your persecution.

He has a purpose in your suffering for the faith at the hands of rebellious humanity.

He says, “Therefore, wait a little longer.”

He says, “History is not over.”

He says God is still working in history.

He is still carrying out a good purpose in history.

What is he doing?

He is using the martyrdom of his people to bring the world to repentance.

Faithful Witness Even Unto Death

God is bringing the kingdom of God into the kingdom of this world through the faithful witness of his people even unto death.

God brings his kingdom victory. He takes back his throne not just through raw righteous wrath, but through our faithful witness even to the point of death, our faithful witness even amidst persecution.

And so in the same way that the Lamb redeems us on the cross by giving himself to suffer for us, in the same way we, God’s people, we the saints, carry out his victory by suffering for this fallen and broken world.

By being persecuted martyr-witnesses.

Our persecution at the hands of this world is not random.

It’s not just an injustice.

It is part of God’s deliberate plan.

He is deliberately allowing us to be persecuted in order to draw the people who persecute us to himself.

He is allowing time for the full costly testimony of his suffering people to do its work in the world through our faithful witness.

Even as we suffer, God’s enemies are melted into submission.

They are melted into repentance at the sight of our suffering with the Lord.

The Martyrs Beneath the Altar

The image John uses is that the martyrs, God’s people, are a sacrifice on the Lord’s altar.

In the old tabernacle and temple system in the Old Testament, you would pour the blood of the sacrifices out at the base of the altar.

And in the same way, now the souls of the martyrs are under the altar.

They’ve been poured out at the base of the altar.

They are a sacrifice, so to speak, on the altar.

Again, not literally.

This is an image.

The point is, as the elder says, those who were slain because of the Word and the testimony they had maintained are giving themselves.

They are sacrificing themselves for the world, for rebellious humanity, to God by accepting mistreatment and persecution and even death out of faithfulness to King Jesus.

It is as if you are sacrificing yourself to God’s redemptive mission.

You are mirroring the way that the Lamb sacrificed himself to redeem us.

Now you are sacrificing yourself to introduce your persecutors to the Lamb who wants to redeem them too.

That’s seal number five.

Seal Six: The Great Day of Wrath

Seal number six in this vision is described as a great day of wrath, a cosmic shaking.

It is described as the day of the Lord.

And it’s described in language that would immediately have reminded the seven churches once again of Rome.

The Roman Empire that persecuted God’s people constantly declared that it was an eternal kingdom and an unshakable kingdom, that it was too great, too big, too powerful to ever fall.

But this vision says unless Rome repents, God will shake the kingdom.

God will cut the eternal kingdom short.

He will show the eternal Roman Empire just how temporary it is.

He will shake it to its core until it is nothing but rubble and ashes.

So literally Rome itself will be leveled by the Lord unless it repents.

More Than the Fall of Rome

But this is not just talking about the possible destruction of Rome because the language this uses goes even deeper than just the typical apocalyptic cosmic catastrophe language.

The typical apocalyptic kind of flowery, ornate, poetic language that they’re used to.

This goes above and beyond that.

Seal number six is described in a way that gives us very much the sense that the whole cosmic order, the entire world system, the flesh, the world, and the devil are being brought to their knees.

That the false king and everyone who lines up behind him are being laid waste to by the true King.

That everything that props up Babylon in whatever form, currently Rome, can and will be dismantled when the Lord is finished with his work, when the Lord returns.

Seal number six describes judgment not just in the form of a warning judgment, but in the form of a kind of universal, decisive, point-of-no-return judgment.

A final judgment and a final victory.

Every Human Power Is Brought Low

It describes absolutely every sector of society.

Kings, generals, the rich, the mighty, the slaves, the free.

There’s no class that’s not involved in this. No group of people that’s not involved here.

It uses the language of earthquakes. It uses the language of just the skies rolling up, everything combusting, coming down in a blaze of the opposite of glory.

And it describes all of rebellious humanity quaking in fear, running in fear, begging the mountains to collapse on them because of, it says, the face of him who sits on the throne and the wrath of the Lamb.

And so there’s all these people who seemed eternal, unshakable, invincible, the kings of the empires of the world, the generals of the empires of the world, the rich, elite, powerful of the empires of the world who have used their power and wealth and prestige and status to plunder the people of God and persecute the people of God, who have opposed the Lord and his people.

Now they’re hiding like terrified animals.

They are begging the elements to kill them.

The Day of the Lord

This is kind of like a greatest-hits reel.

This is actually fusing a bunch of very specific images from the Old Testament.

There’s something in the Old Testament called the day of the Lord.

The day of the Lord uses imagery in Isaiah 13, Isaiah 24, Joel chapter 2, Ezekiel 32.

The sun is darkened, the moon turns to blood, the stars fall, the heavens shake.

The skies roll up like a scroll.

That’s Isaiah 34.

The rebellious humanity that rejects and opposes the Lord and rebels against his kingship, they say, “Fall on us,” to the mountains and the elements.

They say, “Hide us from the wrath of the Lord.”

That’s echoing kind of Hosea chapter 10.

This is describing God’s ultimate judgment over rebellious humanity.

The Four Winds of Judgment

We see that in the fact that it uses the language of the four winds.

In ancient Near Eastern apocalyptic literature, they used that term, the four winds, as a way of kind of talking about the forces of judgment that have been unleashed on the earth.

We see that in Daniel 7.

We also see it in some of the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah 49.

Here it says God has authorized a kind of cosmic-scale judgment.

He’s authorized the four winds to do their worst.

But look at how that judgment takes place.

He allows the world to tear itself apart, so to speak.

And so this sixth seal very much seems like it’s describing the end of all things.

It says, “The great day of wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

The answer is nobody.

Revelation 7: God Protects His People

But the important thing that we have to understand in all of this, the place that John lands the plane here in the vision of the seven seals, is actually not where we would expect it to be.

Because as he is describing all of these things, as he is describing the destruction of darkness and evil and wickedness and injustice and everything, he stops.

He goes far out of his way to make absolutely sure we cannot possibly misunderstand one very important thing.

And that is that in all of this, God protects his people.

He actually stops before jumping to the seventh seal.

Before he jumps into the seventh seal in chapter 8, John actually pauses.

He hits pause and he says, “There’s something I need to clarify.”

He says, “No one can stand the great day of the wrath of the Lord, but God’s people.”

He says, “The people of the Lamb.”

The Mark of the Lamb

He says, “As God’s people, you have been sealed by the Lamb.”

He says, “As God’s people, you have been marked by the Lamb.”

You bear something you could call the mark of the Lamb.

He casts this vision where the Lord has everyone who belongs to him marked on their forehead and/or their hand.

And he says everyone who is marked by the Lamb on their forehead or their hand will be protected, preserved, and ultimately will be vindicated and glorified even as the world in rebellion is succumbing to self-destruction.

He says, “If you are marked by the Lord or sealed by the Lord, you will come out of the great tribulation.”

You will be carried through, enabled to endure the sufferings of, empowered to overcome this great tribulation.

And you will even be a tool that God uses for his redemptive plan and purpose throughout the great tribulation.

A Running Biblical Image

Now, when he talks about the mark of the Lamb or the seal of the Lamb, this is not a new image that Revelation is introducing.

This is a running metaphor all throughout God’s Word.

From Genesis to Revelation, we see this running theme that God’s people are metaphorically—it’s a metaphor, it’s an image, it’s a symbol—you don’t literally have a mark on your forehead or your hand.

But God’s people are marked in a spiritual sense as his.

Whereas everyone who is in rebellion against him is marked as belonging to the enemy.

So case in point, Exodus 13, Exodus 28.

You see on the priestly garments for the priests that represent God’s people in the tabernacle and the temple, and in the same way the firstborn children who are consecrated to be priests and other stuff like that, the garments have a mark of Yahweh on the head, on the turban, and a mark of Yahweh on the hands.

In Deuteronomy chapter 6, God tells his people, “Bind my commands on your head, your forehead, and your hands.”

Once again, it’s not a literal thing.

It’s an image.

It’s a metaphor.

In Ezekiel chapter 9, there’s this kind of prophetic poetic vision.

A man is writing in this vision, and he’s told, put a mark on the foreheads of everyone who sighs and groans over the sins of Jerusalem before the destroying angel goes through the city.

So everyone who has that sign, that mark, that seal is spared.

But then the others are killed.

So the point here in all of these, this is a running theme.

The idea is that if you belong to the Lord, you have his mark on you.

Not literally.

There’s not a literal mark on your forehead or your hand.

It’s that you have been in some sense marked by the Lord for redemption rather than condemnation, for restoration rather than destruction.

And you will be protected and preserved through all of the warning judgments that make up the seals and the trumpets and the bowls.

What the Mark Represents

The mark of the Lord on your forehead and your hand represents that you have been redeemed, just like the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt.

You’ve been redeemed from your condemnation.

You’ve been redeemed.

And so now you belong to the Lord.

Just like the Israelites were a kind of nation that literally belonged to the Lord, now you are part of his kingdom.

You belong to him.

And when the wrath of God is poured out against the devil and the forces of darkness and everyone who aligns with him, you will not receive that wrath.

In the same way, this mark on your forehead, these marks on your hands of the Lord, it’s representative of how the Lord is molding you, how he is changing you.

He is turning you into someone who reflects his goodness and his glory.

Your forehead in the ancient Near East, that represented kind of your mind, your will, your intention.

So your intentions are devoted to the Lord. Your mind is devoted to the Lord. Your allegiance is devoted to the Lord.

He is who you worship and serve and give yourself to.

And your hands kind of represented your actions, your choices, your decisions.

So your actions are carried out in service to the Lord.

Do what the Lord has sent you to do.

You surrender your will to his will so that he is the one who guides and directs and shapes what you do with your hands, just like he guides and directs and shapes your thoughts and your devotions and your allegiance and so on and so forth.

So having the mark of the Lamb on your forehead and/or your hand, that is an image that essentially says you belong to the Lord.

You’ve been redeemed by the Lord.

You serve and you worship the Lord.

You delight yourself in the Lord.

You are loyal and faithful to the Lord.

And you walk in obedience to the Lord.

The Mark of the Beast Reverses the Image

And that image is reversed just a handful of chapters later when it talks about the mark of the beast.

It says there’s a mark on your forehead and/or your hand that represents that you belong to the beast, that you are loyal to the beast, that you serve the beast, that you worship the beast, that you have given the beast control over your head and your heart, over your actions and your decisions and your choices.

It doesn’t mean that there’s literally a mark on your head or literally a mark on your hand.

It doesn’t mean that there’s a microchip or an implant for the beast any more than the mark of the Lamb that all of God’s people have had all the way back from the time of Moses to now.

I don’t have a microchip put in me by God as the mark of the Lamb.

And so in the same way, the mark of the beast, it’s not a microchip, it’s not a barcode, it’s not a tattoo, it’s not anything like that.

It’s not even actually literally visible.

It’s just an image.

It’s an image.

If you worship the beast, if you are following after the broken and wicked and unjust ways that the serpent has drawn the wicked empires of this world into, then you bear the mark of the beast.

And instead, if you follow the Lord, then you bear the mark of the Lamb.

You Were Marked When You Were Saved

And the reason that all of this matters is because he says you’ve been marked by the Lord.

Doesn’t mean you’re specially marked now that this thing with the beast is happening, that this thing with Rome is happening, that this thing with the seven seals is happening.

You were marked when you were saved.

When you came to faith in Jesus, you were marked with the mark of the Lamb, the seal of the Lamb.

And because you belong to the Lamb, you were under the protective shepherding of the Lamb.

It says the Lamb will be their Shepherd.

These people that God has marked and sealed, he says the Lamb will shepherd them.

The Lamb will guide them, lead them, feed them, protect them, care for them.

Meeting Tribulation With Joy

And because that is true, he says God’s marked, sealed people will meet the tribulation with joy, not despair.

He says that because we are marked and sealed by the Lamb, we will meet these sufferings that this fallen and broken world pours out on us, that the serpent who wages war on us is pouring out on us.

We’ll meet these tribulations with joy rather than despair.

He uses the imagery of a great cosmic feast.

He says we wear white robes, we have palm branches, we sing redemption songs, and so on and so forth.

We’ve talked a little bit about the fact that white robes in the ancient Near East, they represented purity.

They represented victory.

They represented vindication.

You were vindicated.

So you put on this white robe that kind of represented that you had been proven to be in the right.

You’d been vindicated from the accusations made against you and so on and so forth.

In other words, you’ve been justified, right?

You’ve been cleansed from your guilt by the sacrificial death of Jesus.

You’ve been united with the Lord through Christ’s death.

And as a result, you live in a state of celebration.

Palm Branches and Deliverance

The palm branches were representative of the Feast of Tabernacles.

That was an Old Testament feast that the ancient Israelites would do.

They would gather and they would celebrate the way that God delivered them in the past.

He delivered them from Egypt. He delivered them from their enemies. He delivered them from the wilderness and on and on.

And they would wave these palm branches joyfully as they carried out this Feast of Tabernacles.

When Jesus was entering Jerusalem, they were waving their palm branches for him as a kind of declaration.

He is the one who’s going to deliver us.

He is the Messiah who is going to ultimately deliver us.

So you have these white robes in this image.

Again, it’s not a literal thing.

You have the white robes that represent the victory you have because of Jesus, the purity that he has given to you.

You have these palm branches that represent the way that you have been delivered by the Lamb who has marked you.

And it says you are singing redemption songs.

It says they shout:

“Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” — Revelation 7:10, WEB

In the Old Testament times, like at the Feast of Tabernacles, they would sing redemption songs just about the way the Lord has redeemed them, rescued them, saved them from this and this and this and this at each of the feasts.

And he says that in some sense, we, the sealed and marked people of God, are going to be singing redemption songs.

They’ll be flowing out of us in joy even as we suffer.

The Great Cosmic Feast

And so he says the feast begins.

He says, “Never again will they hunger, thirst. The sun will not beat down on them.”

He’s referencing Isaiah chapter 49.

God says he’s going to lead his restored, marked, sealed people.

He’s going to protect them from the pain that the heat brings.

He’s going to guide them to springs of living water.

John says that these marked and sealed people of God, he wipes away every tear from their eyes.

That’s a reference to Isaiah 25.

And he’s going to repeat it again near the end of Revelation.

The point here is there’s this great cosmic feast that the prophet Isaiah and others looked forward to and that the Feast of Tabernacles and the other feasts were just kind of pointing towards.

Now it’s been fulfilled in God’s people, in us.

We are protected and preserved even as we suffer, so that even as we suffer our response is joy.

The 144,000

He says that as the marked and sealed people of God, we are the ultimate fulfillment of Israel.

He says there’s 144,000 that have been marked and sealed.

This is often misunderstood as meaning that there’s literally going to be 144,000 people and that they’re literally all going to be Jewish or Israelites, but that’s probably not the case.

This is probably not 144,000 people specifically.

In ancient apocalyptic literature, they used numbers representationally, kind of figuratively, not literally.

The point being that this is probably not literal.

The next line says that no one could count.

There’s 144,000 that no one can count.

Well, if you know it’s 144,000, then you can count, right?

So it’s not literally 144,000.

The point is it’s a grand multitude.

Twelve Times Twelve Times a Thousand

This is the number of the people of God, right?

Twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel.

Twelve times twelve is a kind of squared number.

At the same time, 1,000 was a representational figurative number.

It was a military term.

You would use a thousand as just a catch-all term for a really, really large military troop group.

And so it’s like you’re doing the twelve tribes of Israel multiplied by the twelve apostles multiplied by this massive military legion, and it comes out to 144,000.

Essentially, you take all these numbers that just sort of mean fullness or completeness or perfection, and it’s saying the full, complete, perfect number of God’s people.

All of God’s people throughout all of space and time, past, present, and future, gather into this massive uncountable multitude.

So it’s not literally 144,000 people sometime at the very, very end.

The Israel of God

And it’s not literally a Jewish multitude.

The New Testament very consistently refers to the church as what?

Israel.

According to the New Testament, the church is Israel.

If you are part of the church, you are part of Israel. If you are not, you are not.

If you are ethnically Jewish, but you don’t follow Jesus, you’re not part of Israel.

If you are ethnically Italian and you do follow Jesus, you are part of Israel.

If you are from Milwaukee and you’re Polish and you follow Jesus, you are part of Israel.

The New Testament refers to the church as the Israel of God.

That’s Galatians 6.

As the chosen people.

That’s 1 Peter 2:9.

We shouldn’t assume that this is any different than that unless we have a really good reason to.

Revelation’s Unusual List of the Tribes

Also, when he lists off the twelve tribes of Israel here describing the marked and sealed people of God, he actually doesn’t give a list of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Traditionally, the twelve tribes of Israel was a set group of tribes, but this isn’t that list.

This lists Judah first when in the twelve tribes of Israel, they list Reuben first.

Judah is the tribe of David and it is the tribe of the Messiah, which means they are putting the tribe of Jesus, the Lamb, first.

The point being, in ancient war census collections, you would list the sort of general or the head of the army first.

They’re listing the head of this army at the top.

They’re listing the tribe of Jesus, the head of this messianic army, at the beginning.

So they’re already messing with the order of the tribes.

But at the same time, they don’t even list the tribe of Dan. They don’t list the tribe of Ephraim.

Instead, they list Joseph.

Joseph himself was not the head of a tribe.

They do list off Levi.

Levi is not typically counted in the land tribe lists in the twelve tribes of Israel.

So what’s going on here?

The Army of the Messiah

The point is this is a military census pattern, not a literal list of the tribes of Israel.

This is a description of all of God’s people through all of space and time, past, present, and future, as an army gathered behind the Messiah.

The point is, this is an Israel that is a truer Israel than Israel, a truer Israel than ancient Israel.

This is an Israel that will truly fulfill God’s purpose and plan in the world.

This is an Israel that, rather than rejecting and rebelling against the God of Israel, will line up behind the God of Israel and will carry out his good purpose.

And yet as a military entity, the true Israel that makes up every tribe and tongue and nation that follows after Jesus, Jew and Gentile, the kind of war that we wage is not the violent kind.

Consistently, the way that it presents the warfare that God’s people wage lining up behind the Lamb is faithful witness under persecution.

Just like the Lamb conquers the devil and the forces of darkness by being slain, so also we, his army, conquer by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.

John Hears Israel and Sees the Nations

And at the exact same time, John says that he hears the sealed and marked people of God as 144,000 from these twelve tribes of Israel.

But then he turns and he looks, and he sees not a bunch of Israelis.

He looks and he sees a great multitude from every tribe and tongue and nation.

This is just like when he hears Jesus as the lion and then he turns and he sees him as the Lamb who was slain.

Same person, but two images.

In exactly the same way, here John hears a bunch of Israelites.

Then he looks and he sees every tribe and tongue and nation that follows Jesus.

This is a direct reference to Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel says all the peoples and nations and the men of every language will serve the Son of Man who received the kingdom.

The true Israel is going to be every tribe and tongue and nation who follows Jesus, not one ethnic group.

One New Humanity Gathered Around Christ

This vision essentially is saying that Daniel 7’s promise has been fulfilled.

The Son of Man has received all authority and all the nations are gathered around his throne in worship instead of around the beast in idolatrous worship.

That there’s one new humanity gathered around Christ just like Paul talked about in Ephesians chapter 2.

And that the promise God made to Abraham, that all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s descendant, has been fulfilled, like Paul says in Galatians chapter 3.

This is a true Israel, a fulfilled Israel that has nothing to do with bloodline, nothing to do with ethnicity, nothing to do with being Jewish or Gentile or anything.

And this new, true, fulfilled Israel is sent out as an army for the Lamb.

Not to go kill, but to go save.

To go give our own lives.

To go proclaim the truth, be persecuted for it, persist despite that persecution, and then ultimately melt the hearts of rebellious humanity in the process that draws them to repentance so that they are redeemed rather than destroyed.