Welcome back to another beautiful day in the study of the Word of God. Today we will start chapter 6 of Revelation and what a pivotal chapter it is. Chapters 1-5 have been setting the stage for what will begin here in chapter 6. We saw yesterday as the lamb (Jesus Christ) takes the scroll from the Father. That scroll has seven seals and today we will witness Jesus start opening the seals to reveal His wrath of judgement upon a world that continues to reject Him and His work upon the cross.
Many people struggle with the book of Revelation and the fact that a loving God would judge, torment, and kill ‘innocent’ people. I often hear the question, “why would a loving God do that?” I touched on it heavily in yesterday's study of chapter 5, but you must fully understand God’s righteousness and holiness to fully understand the answer to that question.
I recall a sunday school lesson I taught once on the Israelites behavior under Joshua’s leadership as they were to finally take possession of the promised land. But recall the promised land is not just sitting empty, they must conquer the people there to claim it. Or really, they must have great faith in God to claim it through them. Their first order of business is Jericho. After they march around the city for 7 days, God causes the walls to fall and the Israelites storm the city and kill every man, woman, child, donkey, oxen and sheep. (Jos 6:21) We read this and we think, oh my! What kind of God would do that or allow that? Yet if you study the passage more, you will find that God had given the Canaanites quite the opportunity to turn to Him from their sinful and wicked ways. In fact, do you know how long God gave the Canaanites to believe in Him after He revealed Himself to them? 460 years. Should God have given them one more year? 25 more years? Would it have done any good after 460 years? No. You see here in Revelation we are in the same spot. Jesus came approximately 2020 years ago and was crucified approximately 1987 years ago. God is, and already has, given the world ample time to not just hear about Him, but to make a decision about His Son. But God will not just wait forever to judge unbelievers. Eventually He will move in judgement and that is exactly what we will be studying today in Revelation chapter 6. A few Sundays ago my Pastor said something from the pulpit and it struck me mightily. “The Cross demands a response.” Folks there has never been a truer statement. What Jesus did on the cross for you demands that you either acknowledge it and call upon Him to save you from the death of your sins, or it requires you to ignore it and reject His sacrifice. You have to do one of the two. You can’t play it safe and just sit on the fence, it doesn’t work that way. The cross demands a response. What is your response to Jesus today?
In chapter 6, Jesus will begin opening the seals on the scroll. God is done waiting on an unbelieving, rebellious, sinful world that is done with Him. A world that is living for themselves, blatantly rebelling against Him and His Word. A world that is living in sin and tolerating sin, making no effort to repent from it. A world that has and continues to reject the salvation that His Son died to offer them. God will not wait another 25, 50, or 100 years, you can only wait so long. The time is here.
We have already seen an amazing level of order in Revelation and it will only get more orderly from here on out. We will see a tremendous level of structure within the judgements. There will be a series of sevens and each 7th item will unveil another series of seven. There are the seven seals and the seventh seal introduces the blowing of the seven trumpets. The blowing of the seventh trumpet introduces the seven bowls and the seventh bowl opens up the seven beatitudes which then closes out the great tribulation. Awesome order and detail here as Jesus methodically and thoroughly judges an unbelieving planet.
Today we will not be able to cover all 6 seal openings that are mentioned in chapter 6, so I will cover the first three today and the next 3 tomorrow. Let’s get to it.
6:1-2 – “Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” 2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.
Jesus has taken the scroll from the Father on the throne (Rev 5:7) and He is now going to open the first seal. He will open all of the seals in their specific order and each seal will contain a judgement upon the unbelieving people of the Earth. Each judgement will grow in its severity. As He opens the first seal, one of the four “living ones” with a voice like thunder ushers a command. The command is for the first judgement to come forth. This is important to notice here that every second of this process is thoroughly controlled by Jesus. The judgements are not mishaps, unplanned, created by mother nature or accidentally loosed from Heaven. They are sent with a thunderous and authoratative command. Upon being commanded to come forth, a white horse appears with a bow. This judgment will be one of false peace in the world. The color white represents peace. Notice He has a bow but no arrows. It's not a forced peace but a welcomed peace. He is also “given” a crown. The rider did not earn it, it is given to him to wear, for appearance. The rider is thought to be the antichrist, one that will appear to be in the place of Christ. Let’s examine what this first judgment will look like and how this rider will fulfill it.
To usher in the great tribulation, God will have this period of great peace from the first seal. The calm before the storm. But it will not be a genuine lasting peace, only an orchestrated event. The antichrist will burst onto the scene and make great promises and win the world with his charisma, charm, and promises of lasting peace. Have you ever noticed how willing and eager people are to believe what they want to believe? Just look at any global presidential election in the last 50 years. Somebody flashes onto the scene with a message of hope and then promises the people everything good. Prosperity, peace, security, justice, equality. And every election globally mirrors the other. The nation divides and the people argue over who is the best. People that didn’t even know that this candidate existed a year ago are now arguing with their neighbor over how great they are and how they are going to change the world. The antichrist will be this times 1000. They will be charming, good looking, charismatic, well-spoken and will lead the people with soft words and big promises. His tremendous influence will bleed over borders and into every nation. He will unify the world and the world will love him. But it will all be false. It will be a false peace as the people of the world are led into a false sense of security. The people will be so happy, so content, and so unprepared that they will never see what is coming next. Seal number 2 will not be nearly as pleasant.
6:3-4 - “ When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword."
Jesus opens the second seal and a second different “living one” commands the second judgement forth. It is a rider on a red horse. Red is the color of fire and blood and those both represent war. On the heels of peace like the world has never seen, war is coming. The false peace led by the antichrist is destined to dissolve into the greatest war the planet has ever seen. Notice that authority has been given to the rider to “take peace from the Earth.” We will see the Earth go from an absolute period of false peace to the absolute absence of peace. There will be no peace in any corner of the Earth. It will be a true World War, not one that merely involves a few key nations. He was given a large sword. The sword represents death in battle and the large size of the sword denotes the massive scale on which this war will be fought.
Let us reflect deeply here. Have you noticed that the first 2 judgements do not involve God actually doing anything to humans? He is merely removing His grace and protection and letting us do what we really want to do. Worship false idols, fight, argue, battle, and kill. It’s really sad to see here what man is truly capable of. Now think about this war and how it will be fought? Would you say that war and fighting has changed in the last 100 years? Oh boy. It has gone from a bi-plane with a rifle strapped to the wing to a fully functioning drone bomber that can be remotely operated on missions up to 10,000 miles away. It has gone from artillery soldiers shooting rifles and mortars on the front lines to men in buildings shooting deadly missiles from thousands of miles away while they drink a coke. Folks, the militaries of the world are creating technologies that will usher in a level of death and destruction that the world has never seen. And this is not even mentioning the terror of atomic and nuclear weapons. This is not doom and gloom, this is God’s Word. And the second seal will simply unleash mankind upon himself.
6:5-6 - “ When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”
Jesus opens the third of the seven seals and then the third of the four “living ones” calls forth the third rider upon his horse. By the way there are four horses that help fulfill the first four seals and they are known as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The word apocalypse is defined as “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale.” This horse is black which symbolizes famine (Lam 4:8-9) and mourning (Jer 4:28, Mal 3:14) The next judgment will be a worldwide famine on a scale that has never been seen. Famines always follow war as man’s destruction of the land takes its toll on ability to produce food. The set of scales that the rider holds are not the metaphorical scales of justice but literal scales that you use to measure food. They represent the extreme rationing that will take place during the famine. We next hear one of the four “living ones” talk specifically about weights and food. “A quart of what for a denarius.” A quart has of course been translated into our current system of measurements. A quart of wheat was considered to be the minimum amount of food for a person per day. A denarius was one day’s wage for an average worker. So a full day’s work during the famine will get enough food for barely one person, you could not support a family on this amount. You could also get three quarts of barley for a denarius. This sounds like a better deal, but barley was very low in nutritious value and was normally fed to livestock. It next mentions “do not harm the oil and the wine.” In a day where the average person will be starving, oil and wine will be coveted. They will be prized very highly and will command a great price, if you have them, protect them.
Well, we see the first three seals opened today and what will ensue as a result. False peace led by the antichrist as he lulls the world into a false sense of security and complacency. But it is short lived as God unleashes all mankind into war with each other on an unprecedented level. The war causes a famine that will ripple through every facet of society, impacting the world with great death and suffering. Remember that the seals escalate in their judgement and we will see them only intensify. The next seal, the 4th, is beyond devastating as we will see ¼ of the entire world’s population decimated by disease, continued war, and famine as Jesus unleashes the pale rider...death.
Join me tomorrow as we pick back up with seals 4-6 and finish out chapter 6. God bless your day, may it be full of God, full of His Word, and full of His joy!
photo ~ Captain Aloha on Maui - Maui, Hawaii, USA
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