We come to seal five, the events of this seal is not taking place on the earth.

6:9 “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.
10 They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.”

The Martyred in Heaven

The scene changes, and now there’s an altar in heaven of some sort.
The opening of the fifth seal does not reveal an angelic decree of suffering from the throne room but a human response to suffering. John sees Christians who have been oppressed and killed and who have received a heavenly reward. They are described as “souls having been slain” who are standing “under the altar.”

Placing the saints under the altar emphasizes the divine protection that has held sway over their “soul” despite even their loss of physical life because of persecution

John’s words are a reminder that throughout history there has been a persistent hostility toward deeply committed Christians on the part of those wielding power.

In one part of the world or another, today, some slaughtering is going on. There have been more Christian martyrs in the last 150 years than the previous 19 centuries.

How long Lord, before you do something?

The point is not that these people are simply bitter or trying to get tit-for-tat justice or eye-for-eye satisfaction. The point is because they are the Lord’s people they do see the necessity for justice. If God, finally, is not just, if there is not payback time to the unjust, then the whole moral universe collapses.

The Bible doesn’t make it very clear whether the saints in heaven know very much about what’s going on among the saints of the earth, but they’ve lived through it and died because of it, they know enough to know that some of their relatives are facing the same things. “How long, O Lord?”

The intriguing thing is that the answer is not given in positive terms, like, Well, things are getting better. No, it says, the end can’t come yet because there aren’t enough people who have been martyred yet.

Their response is prayer that the reputation of God and his people be vindicated. The reputation of God’s justice is at stake because he will be considered unjust if he does not punish sin.

When they approach God and say, “God, holy and true,” it is precisely because they recognize him to be holy, because they recognize that he must be faithful and true, that judgment must come.

To the martyrs, is given a white robe.

Probably this is a way of saying they’re clothed with garments of light. They’re stored up in heaven. They are themselves purified of everything.

White robes, does not mean glorified bodies, instead, the metaphor of white robes gives the idea of a purity resulting from persevering faith tested by the refining fire of tribulation.

In terms of immediate historical reference, it may be that those who have died already are those who have died under Nero’s persecution, and now they’re pictured as crying out, and there are more who are about to die under Domitian’s persecution, Trajan’s persecution, and a string of persecutions all the way down to Constantine, and a lot of persecution since then as well.

This may have had an immediate bearing on some of these people. They are told, in effect, to “control their impatience but to rest in the enjoyment of their blessedness

The Sixth Seal a Great Cataclysm

6;12 “I watched as he opened the sixth seal.” There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll …

There are going to be severe disorders on earth and in space, and the forces of nature are going to be let loose upon the ungodly. It is very interesting, those who are left here in the Great Tribulation are those who have spurned and refused the Lord Jesus Christ. They wanted nothing to do with Him.

The last asteroid to damage the earth occurred in a sparsely populated region of Siberia in 1908. Seven hundred square miles of forestland were devastated. Here’s what Time magazine said—May 1, 1989, they asked this question: Where were you on the night of March the 23rd? Out dancing perhaps, or attending a PTA meeting, or just sitting at home watching LA Law”—whatever that is, I don’t watch it. “If so, you did not realize how close you came to disaster. While you were blissfully unaware of the danger, a huge asteroid whizzed past the earth coming closer than any other such heavenly bodies seen in 52 years. If the giant clump of rock, a half mile across, by one estimate, had hit the planet, it would have packed the wallop of thousands of H bombs.

And when all of that happens, then we come back to the verse we started with. There’s going to be a colossal prayer meeting: “And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;”—they go underground—“and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:15–16).

There will be cosmic disturbances. This too is bound up with Old Testament passages in which God comes down, and when he comes, instead of the day of the Lord being a time of revival and blessing, it turns out to be a terrifying time of judgment.

When he came to Sinai, you had earthquakes, and the mountain shakes, and there’s thunder and lightning, and the people are afraid and ask Moses to mediate for them.

When God comes close, it’s not just a happy time. Unless we are ready to meet this God, it is a terrifying time.

There have been times again and again in church history when there have been sufficient judgments that people do start crying out to God. But, sometimes, people start crying, “Hide me from the wrath of the Lamb”?

These themes are so unpopular in our postmodern, relativistic society that we squirm when we hear them, let alone say them. I don’t see how you can read your Bible and not see it. God holds us to account. This theme will get a lot worse in the book of Revelation before it gets any better. The most horrific passage on hell in all of the Bible is Revelation 14.

The earth-dwellers’ appeal desperately to “the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us!’ ”

And if the earth is also to be destroyed literally, this is to demonstrate that the idolatrous earthly securities of the earth-dwellers will be destroyed. Humanity has become perverted and has worshiped the creation (Rom. 1:21–25; Rev. 9:20).

Therefore, creation itself (sun, moon, stars, trees, animals, etc.) has become an idol that must be removed. The Bible repeatedly refers to the heavenly bodies as representing false deities worshiped by Israel and the nations (Deut. 4:19; 17:1–4; Jer. 8:2; Ezek. 8:16; Amos 5:25–27; Acts 7:41–43).

If the most permanent and stable parts of creation will be shaken to their roots, so will those living on the earth. Their earthly securities will be ripped away so that they will appear spiritually naked before God’s judgment seat on the last day. They will try unsuccessfully to hide their destitute condition from the divine gaze and to escape from the coming wrath. They will even rather die from the falling rocks and mountains than face God’s judgment.

This parallel points further to an intended identification of the idolaters with the earth as their ultimate idol.

They hide, not to continue to live, but to die away from God’s presence and judgment.

Chapter 7  The 144,000

7:14 “And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.”

Why God “seals” his servants is debated. The main alternatives are: (1) for protection from physical harm, (2) for protection from demons, and (3) for protection from losing their faith and hence their salvation. Ezekiel 9 is often correctly proposed as the best background for the divine sealing.

There God commands an angel to put a mark on all genuine believers but instructs other angels to slay unfaithful Israelites. The mark on believers is to protect them from the coming wrath, which will be inflicted by the Babylonians and which unfaithful Israelites will suffer. Ezekiel 9, like Ezek. 14:12–23, apparently speaks of the physical protection of the righteous remnant within Israel, who have been purged from the unfaithful by the fire of judgment.

This is confirmed by the same function of the mark of blood over the Hebrews’ doors at Passover (Exod. 12:7, 13, 22–28), which may stand behind Ezekiel 9 as well as behind Rev. 7:2–3 (as is evident from the fact that the seal protects believers from the harmful effects of the following trumpet and bowl plagues, which have been modeled on the Exodus plagues). Spiritual protection of the Israelite faithful may also be included in these two OT texts.

In John’s mind it is certainly not physical security but protection of the believers’ faith and salvation from the various sufferings and persecutions that are inflicted on them, whether by Satan or by his demonic and earthly agents.

Therefore, the sealing of the saints explains further how Christ will keep them from “the hour of testing” which is “to test those who dwell upon the earth” (3:10), that is, those who have persecuted them

From this perspective, the chapter is, an answer to the concluding question of 6:17, “Who is able to stand” before God and not suffer the wrath of the last judgment? This is the definitive answer to 6:17 and the main point toward which the visionary narrative of vv. 9–17 drives.

Chapter seven does not present a new series of future events during a final tribulation period which follow those of ch. 6. But the chapter is a parenthesis explaining the vision of ch. 6 in more depth and providing a larger background against which to understand it better.

This tribulation is not confined to the days immediately preceding Christ’s return, but commences with the birth of the church and continues throughout the church age.

John elsewhere sees the end-time prophecies of Daniel as beginning to be fulfilled from the time of Christ onward.

This chapter is divided into two parts, and a great deal of controversy in interpretation turns on how you relate those two parts. You have, in the first part, the 144,000, all nicely listed for you down to verse 8. Then after this, the great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language, over against the 144,000, all drawn from the 12 tribes of Israel.

So how are we to understand these two groups?

There are many opinions. The dominant ones are, first, the 144,000 represent Jews. If you’re a premillennial, pretribulational, dispensationalist Christian, they are 144,000 Jews who suffered martyrdom during the seven-year tribulation after the church has been raptured out of the way.

Another interpretation says these aren’t Jews, it’s symbolic, but, in fact, 144,000 represent the proportion of martyrs. That is, they belong to the people of God, but they’re not the whole people of God; they’re just the martyred people of God.

A third interpretation holds that the 144,000 are the great multitude. That is, they’re different ways of referring to the same people.

The discussion is complicated by the fact that the 144,000 show up a little later. Strictly speaking, you really need to integrate this passage with the other passage or else give a good reason why not, which is also possible. Chapter 14

What he says is, “Don’t harm the land until something takes place; namely, that the servants of our God are sealed on their foreheads.”

This introduces a major theme in the book of Revelation, one that recurs again and again and again and one we’ll look at in detail when we get to chapters 13–14.

The language is drawn from Ezekiel 9,

This is a vision of Ezekiel. “I heard him call out in a loud voice, ‘Bring the guards of the city here, each with a weapon in his hand.’ And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side.” You didn’t have pens or computers. A writing kit. So you have to have some sort of ink well or black and some sort of quill pen and different receptacles for putting your stuff in. You had a little kit.

‘Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.’

Begin at my sanctuary.’ So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple.”

God is bringing terrible judgment to the city, but before the judgments fall, they’re held back, as it were, until God sends in the man with the ink kit, with the writing kit, and goes in and puts an X on the forehead of all of the people who are righteous.

Their righteousness is defined as grieving over everything that’s evil in the city, unable to change it but ashamed of it, grieving over it, loathing it, not participating in it. Then God says, “All right, go,” and the destroyers go in, and everybody is killed except these people.

Now the intriguing thing, a little later on, the Devil, through his various agents, puts a mark on the forehead of all of his people, and there, unless you have his mark, you can’t buy and sell. You can’t survive.

So you either have the Devil’s mark, and then you’re safe from the Devil’s wrath, but then, in the whole sequence of the book you’re open up to God’s wrath, or you have God’s mark, in which case you’re safe from God’s wrath, but then you’re open up to the Devil’s wrath. So in terms of the whole thrust and theology of the book, it becomes very clear in chapters 13–14 everybody has at least one mark, and you face the other wrath.

The metaphor of washing white robes in blood primarily connotes the objective reality that the saints have been cleansed from their sin by their persevering faith in Christ’s death for them, which has been refined by trials.