Revelation 6:9–17

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. 10They 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?” 11Then 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.

12I 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, 13and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

15Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

Original Meaning

The Fifth Seal (6:9–11)

JOHN SEES SOULS under the altar, martyrs for their testimony.2 The martyrs cry out for vindication: “How long?”3 Because they had been condemned to death in human courts, they now awaited vindication from God’s own court; in ancient law, a plaintiff normally pleaded his own case, so if the judge—earthly or heavenly—failed to vindicate the plaintiff, this silence functioned as a de facto approval of the defendant.4 As current plaintiffs, the martyrs sought vindication from the heavenly judge.

“How long?” is a typical plea for God’s swift intervention in biblical prayers (e.g., Ps. 79:5; Isa. 6:11; Jer. 47:6; Hab. 1:2; Zech. 1:12). Thus in 4 Ezra the righteous ask, “How long?” and the archangel Jeremiel responds, “When the number is complete” (4 Ezra 4:33–37). Like them, the storehouses that keep them are eager for the end, waiting to hand them over for resurrection (4 Ezra 4:41–42).5 An earlier tradition assures the righteous dead to continue crying out for judgment, for God will avenge them and give them great reward (1 Enoch 104:3–4).

That the full number of martyrs had to be completed before the end was probably a familiar apocalyptic theme to the churches in Asia (1 Enoch 47:2–4; 4 Ezra 4:35–37).6 More than this, it reflects biblical sensibilities about justice and the cost of the gospel. God did not allow the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites until the sin of the latter had become so perverse that the slaughter would function as a corporate capital punishment (Gen. 15:16); full judgment did not fall on Jerusalem until descendants of those who had killed the prophets had climaxed this heritage by killing God’s own Son (Matt. 23:31–32; Mark 12:4–8).7 Further, while Jesus paid the price for the world’s sins, his messengers share in his sufferings in the sense that they bring that message to a still hostile world (Col. 1:24).

Earlier biblical prophets had predicted the witness of God’s people to the nations (e.g., Isa. 42:1, 6; 43:10–12; 44:8; 49:6), the conversion of the nations (Isa. 19:19–25; Jer. 3:17; Zech. 2:11; 8:22–23), and the suffering of God’s people in the end time (Dan. 7:21). The vision in Revelation 6:9–11, however, connects these three themes (as in Mark 13:9–10); the suffering witness of believers is a necessary prerequisite for the fullness of the Gentiles to come in from among the nations, the event followed by the final turning of Jewish people to faith in Jesus (cf. Rom. 11:25–27).8 All peoples must be evangelized before the end (Matt. 24:14; 2 Peter 3:9–12; cf. Rev. 7:9). Bauckham declares this to be the heart of Revelation and the climax of biblical prophecy:

Whereas the prophets had predicted the conversion of all the nations … and obscurely foreseen the oppression of God’s people by pagan power in the last days, John’s prophecy reveals that the former is to be the consequence of the latter, and that the key to both is the task of faithful witness in the face of opposition …9

The position of these martyrs “under the altar” undoubtedly recalls the place where priests poured the blood (hence the “life”—Lev. 17:11) of their sacrifices (e.g., Lev. 4:7, 18, 25, 34; 5:9; 8:15; 9:9).10 Pagan tradition sometimes metaphorically compared violent deaths with sacrifices, but Jewish tradition especially developed the image, arguing that martyrs could help expiate God’s anger against the people as a whole (4 Macc. 9:24).11 Jewish tradition recognized that the martyrs were with God and at peace (Wisd. 3:1–3) and were sacrifices accepted by God (3:6). Here in Revelation the sacrifices are not vicarious per se, but the martyrs do share in Christ’s sacrificial suffering; they are allies of the sacrificed Lamb of 5:6, 9 and will also share his exaltation (3:21; 20:4). They are “sacrifices offered to God. In fact, they were slain on earth … but in Christian faith the sacrifice was really made in heaven, where their souls—their lives—were offered at the heavenly altar.”12

Although they are told to wait, they receive divine assurance (6:11). The passive voice in “was given” suggests that God himself rewards them with white robes (see comment on 4:4), and that he himself responds to their plea.13 They should “rest” until that time (cf. 14:13). “A little longer” is indeterminate by human time, measured only by God’s standards (cf. 10:6; 12:12; 17:10; 20:3), but nevertheless functions as an assurance that the time is finite, hence it will not prove too long for them to bear.

Bridging Contexts

SPEEDING THE END. When we say that the good news of God’s kingdom must be proclaimed among all nations before the kingdom actually comes (Matt. 24:14), how do we quantify the completion of such a task? Some have classified unreached people groups (a project helpful for missionary activity), but the New Testament does not expend much energy defining the size or parameters of a “people group.” Perhaps only Jesus’ return will verify that we have sufficiently completed the job of evangelizing the world; the fact that he has not yet come indicates that we have not yet completed the task. If we genuinely “look forward to the day of God,” we can “speed its coming” (2 Peter 3:12) by attending to God’s agendas; that day is delayed because God wants “everyone to come to repentance” (3:9). Revelation warns us, however, that our task will be finished only at a great price to ourselves. The fifth seal warns, however, that we cannot value our lives or possessions and yet complete the task; we cannot have one foot in Babylon with the other in the heavenly city.

The nature of the martyrs’ prayers. The martyrs in this passage, like some righteous sufferers in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 24:12; 2 Chron. 24:22; Ps. 79:10; Jer. 18:21), cry out for vengeance.31 Jesus, however, teaches us to pray for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44; Acts 7:60), and contrary to what sometimes constitutes our natural tendencies, he probably did not intend us to pray, “Lord, please strike them dead!” How can we as responsible interpreters harmonize both biblical teachings? Jesus also spoke of the blood of martyrs crying out, from the blood of Abel (Gen. 4:10) to that of Zechariah (2 Chron. 24:20–22; Matt. 23:35); a tradition about the latter complains that God especially judged the temple because Zechariah’s killers failed to treat his blood as respectfully as they would have treated sacrifices.32 And Jesus’ own blood would also demand vindication (Matt. 23:30–32; 27:25); such sentiments appear elsewhere in the New Testament as well (Luke 18:7; 2 Tim. 4:14).

The very suffering of the righteous cries out for vengeance (cf. 1 En. 47:1), and the cry of the martyrs here is ultimately a cry for justice, a plea for vindication, answered in God’s judgments on a sinful world (Rev. 8:4–6; 16:6) and ultimately by his final judgment (6:12–17; 18:21, 24; 19:2). Releasing the debts of our individual enemies does not mean that we need to quit hoping for vindication, provided that we are hoping more for that vindication by their personal repentance rather than their deaths, for God himself prefers their repentance (Ezek. 18:23). In contrast to the one-sided ethics of many Christians today, this is a cry for justice and the overthrow of evil, a New Testament as well as Old Testament concept.33

Earthquakes, stars, and cosmic collapse. The way we apply the principles in the text will depend on the culture for which we are contextualizing it. In traditional Shona culture, for instance, earthquakes are caused by God walking in the earth, and some other tribes traditionally attribute earthquakes to special deities.34 In such a context, announcing God’s sovereignty over the earth (6:12) may be paramount. Such a message of God’s control over earthquakes may likewise prove encouraging to Christians living near the San Andreas fault in California. “God just clapped his hands,” announced one witness of the Bay area earthquake of 1989 that claimed fifty-five lives and billions of dollars in property damage.35 Because John’s ancient Asian audience knew and feared earthquakes, such an image of judgment, though expected in any case from the Old Testament prophets, would prove particularly unnerving.

Relating the image to analogous modern images of fear (especially geographically relevant ones) will help translate the image for today’s audience.36 But ultimately Revelation portrays the final earthquake and the terror that awaits the unrepentant world just before the coming of Christ. Thus, the most central application is to take courage that God will vindicate his suffering saints (6:9–11) and make the world recognize the Creator they have spurned (6:12–17).

One need not be an astronomer to understand that the ancient images of stars falling to earth (6:13) are physically impossible. All stars would have to become black holes to fit on earth, and then trillions of them would have to hurl, at millions of times the speed of light, into the earth’s surface; no one could live long enough to lament their misery as in 6:16–17.

Yet in merely beginning to imagine such a scenario we have experienced some of the terror that may have seized ancient hearers; the evocative effect is roughly equivalent. As in other ancient texts (which occasionally reapplied such images for local judgments within history, as noted above), the specific images contributed to the overall picture of the dissolution of the cosmos as we know it, the reversal of creation. The impact on the reader is to be complete: There is no security, no firm ground to stand on, nothing in the universe to depend on except God himself. The rest of creation will collapse.

Contemporary Significance

AVAILABLE AS SACRIFICES. The invitation to be available as sacrifices to God by martyrdom takes exhortations such as the call to be “living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1) to their logical conclusion. Although the world persecutes Christ’s witnesses (as the fifth seal testifies), God will vindicate them (as the sixth seal confirms); therefore we should witness boldly. Yet in the United States, it is often my experience that Christians are complacent, satisfied with their own conversion and personal “growth.” As I witness to members of various cults like Mormons, I often find a greater commitment to spreading their message—though it is a false gospel—than I find among most evangelical churchgoers.37

Cultists’ biblical arguments are usually easy to refute, but how does one respond to the complaints of cult members who are former evangelicals (like the Jehovah’s Witness I shared Christ with today) who for the first time learned a form of “discipleship” in a cult? While I was a graduate student, I helped some students out of the extremist International Churches of Christ movement. But I could offer only a little consolation as they afterward struggled to find sound churches with the same degree of fervor and fellowship they found in their ICC church. The fellowship at the sectarian church may have been insincere (immediately terminated upon their withdrawal) and much of the discipleship based on selective use of proof texts; but their zeal bore more resemblance to early Christianity (at least outwardly) than most complacent churches I know.38

On several occasions in street ministry I have been beaten or had my life threatened. On one occasion on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn I was urging a man that Jesus was the only way to be reconciled to God when finally, in anger, he announced that he had a gun and was going to kill me. “You talk about heaven,” he charged. “We’ll see how ready you are to die.” I responded that I knew where I was going, but I would prefer to stay alive longer to keep witnessing to people like him. After a few more threats he walked away, and the next night even returned to apologize and say that he and his wife wanted to visit the church I was working with. But the danger had been a real one, and that summer of witnessing in 1986 could have been my last. When some in my Revelation class were getting nervous about the possibilities of martyrdom, Emmanuel Itapson, a minister from northern Nigeria, explained that martyrdom looks small when you actually face it. If we have proved our faithfulness in most of the tests we face today, we will have practiced for bigger tests if they come.

In the late nineteenth century, Hudson Taylor, in seeking more recruits for his mission to raise up culturally sensitive indigenous Chinese churches, claimed that those he needed were “men and women … such as will put Jesus, China, souls, first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary.”39 Such a commitment was bound to be tested in time. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900, responding to the insensitivity of Westerners in general, slaughtered 188 Protestant missionaries and 30,000 Chinese Christians. Yet this slaughter led to “threefold church growth in the next decade.”40 Cross-cultural missionaries sometimes face martyrdom today as well.41

The good news will not be fully proclaimed to all nations (Matt. 24:14) until a generation of Christians rises who is radical enough to literally die for the sake of reaching the unreached. It currently appears that some hard Islamic and Hindu strongholds will be reached only the way Europe and that most other mission fields were originally pried open—through the blood of martyrs.42 In many nations, such as the Sudan, Iran, and Pakistan, the ground has already been receiving the blood of many of our brothers and sisters. Yet with some important individual exceptions, the current generation of North American Christians shows little inclination to sacrifice for the gospel, much less to die for it. As musician John Fischer put it:

Point a gun at each of the 60 million people who, according to Mr. Gallup’s poll, are born-again Christians. Tell them to renounce Christ or have their heads blown off, and then take a recount. I think George, like Gideon, would find his troops dwindling. Actually, the price probably wouldn’t have to be so extreme today. Threatening to confiscate their TV sets might just produce the same results. When faith is cheap, it is easily pawned.43

Those of us with a vision to reach the world for Christ must begin investing in a younger, increasingly multicultural generation, equipping them for sacrificial leadership. The younger leaders must begin preaching a biblical gospel from which some (with notable exceptions) in the present generation have shrunk from preaching: The gospel is worth our lives and all we have, and no cost is too great to reach the world for Jesus Christ our Lord. In his comments on Revelation, Billy Graham struggles with whether over the years he had “made the Christian faith look too easy,” with whether he had preached what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” He asks: “In my eagerness to give away God’s great gift, have I been honest about the price He paid in His war with evil? And have I adequately explained the price we must pay in our own war against the evil at work in and around our lives?”44 It is a question that challenges most of us.

The coming vindication. As the martyrs cry for vindication, so do suffering believers today. That God grants the martyrs’ request but it does not come right away should encourage us to persevere. Many generations of American slaves cried to God for freedom (cf. also Ex. 2:23–25) before the liberation from slavery came; many South Africans died fighting apartheid before it was finally abolished. Prophets and apostles like Jeremiah (Jer. 43:4–7) and Paul (2 Tim. 1:15) never lived to see the full impact of their ministries, but we recognize them in retrospect; the generation immediately following Jeremiah embraced his message (2 Chron. 36:21–22; Ezra 1:1; Dan. 9:2). God showed Habakkuk impending judgment on Israel’s oppressors and encouraged him to trust in the vision: “Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay” (Hab. 2:3). In time the promised judgment fell on John’s Babylon, and it will come on the final Babylon no less decisively.

God’s time is not always our time, but even if we do not live to see the fulfillment of all our prayers, we can die in hope that God will bring about the things he has promised. After the saints’ cries, God judges the world (6:12–17); despite the arrogant fantasies of God’s enemies (Prov. 18:11), human power will provide no refuge in that day when the true King executes justice on the entire social order from Caesar on down (6:15).

Original Meaning

The Sixth Seal (6:12–17)

THE SIXTH SEAL portrays the end of the cosmos as humanity knows it. Far from merely a repeatable judgment within history, like the four riders (6:1–8), this judgment includes the dissolution of the heavens (6:12–14) and the world finally recognizing that it stands under its Creator’s wrath (6:16–17).

This graphic portrayal of destruction opens with an earthquake (6:12), which is part of the moving of the mountains (6:14) beneath which the wicked seek to flee (6:15–16). Ancient writers sometimes depicted earthquakes in exaggerated language, declaring, for example, that they could “make mountains collapse.”14 Jewish writers also used similar poetic language for cataclysmic events other than the end of the age (Jer. 4:24; 8:16; Mic. 1:4).15 But this earthquake seems to be no exaggeration: It is the climactic, eschatological earthquake that truly removes mountains (Rev. 11:13; 16:18; cf. Ps. 97:5; Ezek. 38:19–20; Zech. 14:5), which often appears in Jewish scenes of the end (1 Enoch 1:6–7; 53:7; 4 Ezra 6:13–16; T. Moses 10:4).16 Yet God’s faithfulness to his elect (7:17) overshadows any terror of earthquakes (Isa. 54:10). Because some of the cities whose churches are addressed in Revelation had been devastated by earthquakes only a few decades earlier, this image probably proved particularly graphic and terrifying for them (as in Sib. Or. 5.291).17

Discoloration or eclipsing of the sun or moon symbolized terrifying judgments both among Jews and pagans.18 Ancient texts occasionally employ the disappearing of stars, formation of islands, and so forth, as metaphoric images for traumas in past history (Sib. Or. 4.58–60); Revelation (Rev. 12:7) or Jewish texts (Sib. Or. 5.512–31) sometimes speak of celestial disruptions in terms of spiritual conflict in the heavens.19 But that is not the usual significance of this imagery, and the image here is worse than a mere eclipse; especially in this kind of literature, the conjunction of various celestial signs normally points to the end of the age, when the sun and moon will be darkened (Isa. 13:9–11; 24:21–23; 1 En. 102:2–3).20

The rolling up of the heavens “like a scroll” (6:14) comes from day of the Lord images in Isaiah 34:4, referring to the cosmic judgment when God punishes the wicked nations, a text in which heaven’s hosts also wither like a leaf on a fig tree (cf. Rev. 6:13).21 For most of Revelation’s audience, the picture likely evoked the mundane image of reading a scroll, which one would typically unroll with the right hand while with the left one rolled up what one had just finished reading.22 But the mundane image here translates into one of terror for humanity! Earlier texts had used this image of the heavens being rolled up like a scroll (Sib. Or. 3.82) to emphasize God’s sovereignty over the heavens (3.81) and that the entire dome of heaven would collapse on the earth (3.83), as the entire universe unraveled at its seams (3.80).23

The passage also indicates that it is ultimately loyalty to Jesus Christ, not social status, that determines one’s fate. Ancients sometimes summarized humankind by simply contrasting opposites, for example, “slave and free”;24 death would annul such distinctions (Job 3:19). But John lists the entire social order in verse 15, emphasizing that no marks of distinction will exempt anyone from judgment—from the “divine” Caesar on down.25

In 6:15–17 Revelation recalls an image of inescapable judgment from Hosea 10:8 (where fugitives from God’s wrath plead for hills and mountains to cover them; cf. Luke 23:30) and Isaiah 2:19 (where people flee to caves and holes in the ground in the day of God’s wrath; cf. 2:10).26 Caves and mountain clefts (6:15) were useful for hiding from human enemies, and Christians in Sardis could have thought of the cave-tombs of the mountain facing their acropolis.27 But such sites would prove utterly futile in obstructing the One who moved whole mountains in his wrath (6:14).28

The flight of these people from God’s wrath in the heavens may reflect the destruction of the heavens (6:12–14), but it also suggests some sort of image that reveals the coming of God and the Lamb in the sky (cf. Matt. 24:30).29 Lambs were considered among the most docile creatures (Isa. 11:6; Sir. 13:17); hence “wrath of the Lamb” is a striking and terrifying image. Note that those who have not yet repented, who seek refuge from caves and mountains, do not cry out to God or the Lamb for mercy; it is now too late for that (cf. 1 En. 50:2–5; 63:1–12).

The final image of the sixth seal, in which the disobedient to God’s will cry out, “Who can stand [in the day of wrath]?” (6:17, adapting the language of Joel 2:11, which follows the cosmic judgment image of Joel 2:10; cf. also Mal. 3:2), prepares the reader for the answer that comes in the following vision: The servants of God can stand in that day (7:1–17).30 They can stand during the plagues within history (7:3), which in turn provides an assurance that God will be with them at the close of the age.

Bridging Contexts

Contemporary Significance