6:1 I looked on when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a thunderous voice, “Come!”[3] 2 So I looked, and here came a white horse! The one who rode it had a bow, and he was given a crown, and as a conqueror he rode out to conquer.
3 Then when the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come!” 4 And another horse, fiery red, came out, and the one who rode it was granted permission to take peace from the earth, so that people would slay one another, and he was given a huge sword.
5 Then when the Lamb opened the third seal I heard the third living creature saying, “Come!” So I looked, and here came a black horse! The one who rode it had a balance scale in his hand.
6 Then I heard something like a voice from among the four living creatures saying, “A quart [a daily ration] of wheat will cost a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley will cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil and the wine!”
7 Then when the Lamb opened the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come!” 8 So I looked and here came a pale green horse! The name of the one who rode it was Death, and Hades followed right behind.[4] They were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill its population with the sword, famine, and disease, and by the wild animals of the earth.
9 Now when the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been violently slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony they had given. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Master, holy and true, before you judge those who live on the earth and avenge/dispense justice for our blood?” 11 Each of them was given a long white robe and they were told to rest for a little longer, until the full number was reached of both their fellow servants and their brothers who were going to be killed just as they had been.
12 Then I looked when the Lamb opened the sixth seal, and a huge earthquake took place; the sun became as black as sackcloth made of black hair, and the full moon became blood red; 13 and the stars in the sky fell to the earth like a fig tree dropping its unripe figs[5] when shaken by a fierce wind. 14 The sky was split apart like a scroll being rolled up[6], and every mountain and island was moved from its place.
15 Then the kings of the earth, the very important people, the generals, the rich, the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 because the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to withstand?[7]
8:1 Now when the Lamb opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.[8]
That’s…a lot to take in – and confusing. So, let’s talk.
Christians alive in the 90’s A.D had experienced some bad things. This was “what is” to John’s audience.
- 44: Judea comes under direct Roman control
- 49 : Jews are expelled from Rome
- 54: Nero’s reign begins; he is notorious for persecuting Christians
- 60: Second major earthquake of that century
- 64: Week-long fire destroys 2/3 of Rome
- 65ish: Peter and Paul executed
- 66: Procurator Florus incites rebellion at the temple, leading to slaughter of 3600 Jews, which leads to Jewish/Roman war
- 68: Nero kills himself; rumors abound he will come back to life
- 69: First Roman civil war erupts in power struggle to replace Nero. Four emperors vied for control.
- 70: Jerusalem leveled, temple destroyed
- 79: Vesuvius erupts
- 80: Colosseum completed. Not only does objectionable stuff happen inside, but the outside is sided with the marble stripped from the temple.
- 92: A great famine
- 93: Domitian's reign of terror begins.
Jesus said the birth pains of the end times would happen in the generation of his audience[9], and the glorified saints in Revelation 6:9–11 appear to have suffered under all four trials portrayed in the seals. John didn't have to make stuff up to unveil the template for patterns in history. Life is hard. Everyone suffers; Christians will suffer for being Christians. Be ready.[10] So, yes, it’s grim, but this was always assumed to be the precursor of the final kingdom of God.[11] There are birth pains before there is birth.[12]
This brings us to the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The players who were waiting in the wings for the New Covenant Church to start have entered the world stage. There time has come, because the church has begun. Enter stage left.
WHITE HORSE This is Conquest or Triumph which is (in my opinion) primarily though not exclusively spiritual. Some think this is Jesus (see Revelation 18); some think it’s a Roman emperor because conquerors rode white horses. I favor a third view. The Bible describes Satan as an angel of light, a counterfeit who looks good but is bad. This rider is the same thing. He makes a great presentation, but chaos follows him. The white horse is a counterfeit of the Rider On The White Horse we will see later,[13] the antichrist figures John wrote about in 1,2, and 3 John, arising from within the church. The churches in Pergamum and Thyatira were being conquered: Ephesus resisted it.
RED HORSE The second rider represents violent bloodshed and death. It’s the removal of peace from the earth. When the second horse causes men to “slay” one another, the word - when it's used in Revelation - only refers to the death of the followers of Jesus or of Jesus.[14] Once again, this can be spiritual warfare, persecution, or general violence in the earth. The White Horse conquered some of God’s people through deception; the Red Horse brings violence. The churches in Pergamum, Smyrna (and Philadelphia and Ephesus to a lesser degree) experienced this.
BLACK HORSE This horse appears to represent poverty, famine and economic exploitation.[15] A quart of wheat would supply an average worker with one day's sustenance for his family. Barley was used by the poor to mix with the wheat. Basically, the poor were living hand-to-mouth if they were lucky. Sometimes it was much worse.[16] For Christians who could not participate in good conscience in the Trade Guilds, life was economically hard already. This kind of scenario could be disastrous. We read about this with the church in Smyrna.
GREEN HORSE Literally, “pestilence,” the fourth horseman represents widespread human death, with the ashen, pale-green color meant to mimic the pallor of death. The church in Thyatira experienced this (and Sardis was wasting away spiritually; Philadelphia had ‘little strength’).[17]
Eusubius wrote that at the heights of the persecution, when Maximinus was Roman Emperor, both famine and pestilence along with other things fell upon them “so that such an innumerable multitude perished that they could not be buried. When the Armenians resisted the Romans, so that many were killed that the bodies of the dead were eaten by dogs. Finally, those left alive began to kill the dogs, fearing that they themselves might die and that the living would become their tombs.” [18]
No wonder the 7 letters constantly admonished Christians to endure and be faithful in the midst of all they endured. Ever been to a movie theater where the audience was interactive? I can envision the early readers nodding and crying; somebody says, “Truth. Say it, say it.” This has been life.[19]
THE MARTYRS The martyrs[20] cry out, “How long?” I can almost hear the amens murmured in that 1st century house church. Those 4 horsemen have been wreaking havoc on followers of Jesus.
6th SEAL The phenomena listed in the 6th seal were common images for God’s judgment in “the day of the Lord.”
- “The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light” (Isaiah 13:10; Joel 2:10–11).
- God would turn “the moon to blood before…the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Joel 2:31).[21]
- “Men will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from dread of the Lord” (Isaiah 2).
- Jesus said that the inhabitants of Jerusalem would cry out “Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ (Luke 23:30).
- Jesus told his disciples that "in those days, following that distress, `the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken'" (Mark 13:24-25;Matthew 24:29; Luke 21:25-26).[22]
- Premature darkness and an earthquake accompanied Jesus’ crucifixion (27:45, 51).[23]
Adam Clarke thinks this is a cultural broadside on political, spiritual and religious powers corrupting the world.
- A great earthquake - Momentous change in civil and religious constitution
- The sun (pagan government) is darkened, degraded and humbled.
- The moon (pagan worship) was destroyed
- The stars of heaven - The gods and goddesses became as useless as the figs shaken from a tree.[24]
- The heaven departed as a scroll — The whole system of pagan and idolatrous worship was shriveled up like a scroll thrown in a fire.
- Every mountain — All the props of the empire (allies, tributary kings, colonies, mercenary troops) remove their worship, support, and maintenance (as we will see happen with Babylon later).
- Islands — Heathen temples[25]
Okay, that last one is a stretch. I think this is a way to read it, not the way.
- Countries have never just persecuted Christians. The heart that gives them permission to persecute one group gives them permission to do that to everybody.
- Countries have never just exploited Christians. The heart that lets them do that lets them do that to everybody.
- Countries that have allowed or even encouraged disease, death, and exploitation to hit Christians hard are going to be willing to let that happen to any group of people they don’t like.
We can’t compartmentalize ourselves as individuals or nations.
- What we are good with happening ‘there’, we will eventually be good with happening ‘over there’ and then ‘over here.’
- What we want to see happen to ‘that person’ becomes what we want to see happen to ‘that person’ and then ‘all those people.’
- Then eventually we are the people ‘over there’; we are ‘that person’ to someone else because we created and allowed that kind of system to happen.
Sometimes we get what we want - and it’s a terrible thing. We may sow the wind, but who can stand the whirlwind?[28] This is why we never fight our battles with the enemy’s weapons. The means we use will make us who we are in the end.
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[1] Expositor’s Bible Commentary
[2] I tend to think they are examples of recapitulation, retelling (overall) same thing story with different and increasing focus and intensity, with the final version (the bowls) leading into the Final Judgment.
[3] The Four Horsemen in the first 4 were foreshadowed in Leviticus 26, Ezekiel 14, Jeremiah 14:12, Zechariah 1:7-11 and 6:1-8, and by Jesus (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). They are probably meant to be understood as happening simultaneously, or side-by-side. I say this for three reasons. And I say this as an opinion that is not of primary importance, and I won’t fight you over it. It’s just my framework, and I might be wrong.
· First, it was typical for a will with 7 seals to have everything revealed after the 7th seal, not progressively.
· Second, the Chapter 7 interlude (after the first six seals were opened) includes the following: “Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, who had the seal of the living God. He shouted out with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given permission to damage the earth and the sea: “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees until we have put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”
· In Zechariah 6:1-8, the horses are in chariot teams
[4] Personified Death and Hades appear together in some Biblical poetry (Psalm 49:14; 116:3; Isaiah 28:15; Hosea 13:14; Habakkuk 2:5), as well as in Revelation 1.
[5] The language evokes Isaiah 34:4; the stars would fall “like shriveled figs from the fig tree.”
[6] Revelation continues to draw on Isaiah 34:4, where “the heavens rolled up like a scroll.” One would normally unroll a scroll with the right hand while with the left hand rolling up what one had just finished reading.
[7] Joel 2:11: “The day of the Lord is great … Who can endure it?” Malachi 3:2: “Who can endure the day of his coming?”
[8] Don’t get hung up on the ‘half an hour.’ It’s just a short time of silence.
[9] Matthew 24:34
[10] This was not new information to John’s audience. The OT prophets said judgments would precede the day of the Lord (Isaiah 13, 34; Jeremiah 4–7; Ezekiel 7, 25; Amos 5:18–27; Zephaniah 1–3). God is a holy God, after all. There must be an account for sin. The division of 7 seals/trumpets/bowls reminded 1st century Jewish readers of a warning repeated four times in Leviticus 26: ‘I will punish you for your sins seven times over’ (18, 21, 24, 28). When Jesus talks of the end times in the gospels (Matthew 24; Mark 13, Luke 21) he mentions the seven judgments found in Revelation 6.
[11] NET Bible Commentary
[12] Matthew 24:8
[13] “What of the rider’s bow? In Greek mythology, Apollo was the god who inspired prophecy, and he is often depicted carrying a bow. The bow probably represents false prophecy, whose effect has already been felt in the Asian churches. If he represents false prophets and false prophecy, the vision confirms John's view that false prophets like the Nicolaitans at Pergamum and "Jezebel" at Thyatira, urging compromise with the values of the Roman Empire, are responsible for all the other troubles to come.” - IVP New Testament Commentary
[14] NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
[15] The balance held by the third rider symbolizes divine judgment. Daniel declared to King Belshazzar, “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting” (Dan. 5:27). Leviticus 26:26 describes the distribution of bread during famine: “They will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied” (cf. Ezek. 4:16)
[16] “In A.D. 51, the emperor Claudius barely escaped a hostile crowd during a grain shortage and resulting famine that left Rome with only a fifteen-day supply of grain. During their revolt, the Jews in Jerusalem experienced great famine. Thousands died as relatives fought over… food. The most horrific example involved a young mother named Mary of Bethezuba who, because of her hunger, tore her baby from her breast and roasted it, devouring half the corpse. This abomination of infant cannibalism horrified both the rebels and the Romans.” - How To Read The Bible Book By Book
[17] “In 65 when Nero was persecuting the church, a plague broke out in Rome killing 30,000 residents. Pestilence also broke out in Jerusalem due to overcrowding during the Roman siege in A.D. 70.” N.T. Wright, Revelation For Everyone
[18] N.T. Wright, Revelation For Everyone
[19] There is remarkable overlap in this seal with what Jesus told one of his audiences (Luke 21: 5-38) that they would see come to pass in their lifetime.
[20] Beale is of the opinion that “It is possible that only literal martyrs are in mind, but more likely those who are “slain” are metaphorical and represent the broader category of all saints who have suffered through the trials for the sake of their faith and died (so Rev. 13:15–18 and perhaps 18:24; 20:4).”
[21] “Such an eclipse occurred on October 18, 69. ‘The moon itself was turned to blood. Its eclipse, which entered its maximum phase of near totality at 9.50 p.m., four hours after dusk, gives it a sinister copper-coloured appearance as the light of the sun, drained of its blue component, was refracted round the earth by the latter’s atmosphere, and fell dimly upon the almost full orb of the moon. This must surely be a portent of disaster and death.’ Seven days later Vitellius’ army was completely routed at the second Battle of Cremona, ensuring the accession of Vespasian as emperor.” - Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Of The New Testament
[22] The sun turns black and the moon blood red, the stars fall, and the sky is rolled back as a scroll — all common elements in Old Testament accounts of the end (Isa. 13:9–11; 24:1–6; 19–23; 34:4; Ezek. 32:6–8; 38:19–23; Joel 2:10, 30–31; 3:15–16; Zech. 14:5).
[23] Josephus mentioned numerous signs around Jerusalem before its fall: a star resembling a sword hung over the city; a comet lasted a year.
[24] Michael Heisser favors a reading that sees the “stars of heaven” as similar beings as well. At least one of the stars in the trumpet judgments is a being.
[25] Adam Clarke: "Now," says [Dowd], "it is certain that the fall of any of these cities or kingdoms was not of greater concern or consequence to the world, nor more deserving to be described in pompous figures, than the fall of the pagan Roman empire, when the great lights of the heathen world, the sun, moon, and stars, the powers civil and ecclesiastical, were all eclipsed and obscured, the heathen emperors and Caesars were slain, the heathen priests and augurs were extirpated, the heathen officers and magistrates were removed, the temples were demolished, and their revenues were devoted to better uses. It is customary with the prophets, after they have described a thing in the most symbolical and figurative manner, to represent the same again in plainer language; and the same method is observed here, Revelation 6:15-17.”
[26] “The judgment of the world originates in its failure to believe and be faithful to this God. When it creates its own deities, it suffers the natural consequences of deifying the non-divine. In this sense, judgment proceeds from the throne of God and from the Lamb (6:16–17) because the rejection of the divine gift of life carries with it inherent deadly consequences… when humans reject Lamb power they experience it as imperial disaster—disordered desire, death, and destruction.” Michael Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly
[27] “Revelation does not contain two competing Christologies and theologies—one of power and one of weakness—symbolized by the Lion and the Lamb, respectively. Revelation presents Christ as the Lion who reigns as the Lamb, not in spite of being the Lamb…. judgment by God/Christ in Revelation must be an expression of divine identity that is not in conflict with Lamb power. The judgment of the world originates in its failure to believe and be faithful to this God. When it creates its own deities, it suffers the natural consequences of deifying the non-divine. In this sense, judgment proceeds from the throne of God and from the Lamb (6:16–17) because the rejection of the divine gift of life carries with it inherent deadly consequences…when humans reject Lamb power they experience it as imperial disaster—disordered desire, death, and destruction. The first tidal wave of violent imagery expresses the apocalyptic insight that the world’s suffering is allowed by God, but is more fundamentally a result of sin. We would of course be misguided not to see these also as divine punishment, similar to the snowball effect of sin unleashed in the world according to Paul in Rom 1:18—32. The question “human sin or divine punishment?”… asks for an unnecessary choice; the answer is of course, “both.” (Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly)
[28] Hosea 8:7
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