However, Jesus described the beginning of the end, the beginning of the birth pangs, but it all leads up to a major culminating moment. Jesus' language serves a metaphorical purpose, to describe one moment in history that happens over and over again until the time of ultimate fulfillment. The challenge is then, deciding whether these apocalypses come from God Himself or come from the negligence of men.
I don't know if we'll get all the way through these six verses, but I want to read them to you to set the text in our minds, as we prepare our hearts for what the Spirit is saying to us. Revelation 6:12-17.
Fear often causes people behave in ways that are irrational. As we will see in today's text, fear is powerful enough to cause the world to pray, not to God, but for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them. In other words, they would rather die than face the wrath of God. Allow me tell you what you to fear, fear God! He is the One who, after He has killed you, has the power and authority to cast you into eternal hell. So, I tell you, fear Him! There is coming a day when the world will all have the same debilitating, uncontrollable, disabling fear, as God pours out His wrath on the entire sinful world.
In Luke chapter 21, Jesus said "There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken."
By the way, the word faint is the Greek verb "apopsuchó," meaning to to leave off breathing or die. There will be such fear, that people will literally be scared to death, when that day comes. People will die from sheer terror!
Hebrews 10 says "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
Let's watch closely as the sixth seal is being opened. I want you to bear in mind, this is not the final judgment; it is not yet the end of the world.
Verses 12 through 14, "I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places."
The Lamb, who has the seven sealed scroll in His hands, and as each of these seals have been broken, we have seen the events of what is to come. As we said earlier, these involve war, famine, and death that comes through pestilence. Up until now, there have been human agents involved in the vengeance as the martyred believers are praying for this to come. I'd like you to notice that now, God acts without them. He begins direct intervention. And, it is terrifying, inconceivable and devastating. As the birth pangs continue to increase, things will begin to move much faster and faster.
The opening of the sixth seal will produce not only immense fear, but a series of worldwide catastrophes, in which all of nature will be affected, including the sun, moon, and stars. It will also trigger the first of three great earthquakes. All the earth’s faults will begin to fracture simultaneously, resulting in a cataclysmic global earthquake. Accompanying the earthquake will be numerous volcanic eruptions; and large amounts of ash and debris will be blown into the earth’s atmosphere, blackening the sun and giving the moon a blood-red hue.
In Acts chapter 2, on the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter warned "The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood, Before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come." and it was fulfilled shortly after that by the coming of the Holy Spirit. The two images of sackcloth and blood convey that destruction that is coming. Blood symbolizes death, and sackcloth were made out of the hair of black goats, which represents the mourning that comes along with death.
This fits exactly with Jesus' teaching in Matthew 24 when He said "But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other."
Jesus is describing the same event.In fact, just prior in verse 24, He says "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect."
Luke follows that same sequence, in chapter 21, "There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
And, in the Old Testament, I won't belabor all them, you can just look them up on your own, Joel chapter 2 and Isaiah chapter 29, Haggai chapter 2, same thing, just not in as much detail given by the Lord as we have here. Zechariah 14 says "In that day there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night."
Throughout this period time, believers have been proclaiming the Word of God, as the world has been experiencing violence, famine, and disaster after disaster, they have witnessing and testifying about Jesus. They've been telling the world, "What you’re experiencing is all written in the Scripture. Jesus Christ can deliver you." The worlds response is to massacre the Christians, the preachers and all those who follow Christ! Because they are deceived by Satan, they will believe the Antichrist. This is the beginning of the last half of the Great Tribulation.
It's going to be just like in Noah’s day, no matter what he said to them, they didn't listen. "They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah boarded the ark." That’s exactly how it’s going to be again. They're not going to believe it's coming until it hits! Then the world will know that the Christians were right. But in the midst of that, there will be false christs, saying "As soon as we have killed all these Christians,everything is going to be just fine. Don't worry!" And, while their saying all of that, I Thessalonians 5 says, "Destruction will come on them suddenly like birth pains on a woman with child, and they shall not escape."
At the end of verse 13, he says "As a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind." This shaking caused by asteroids, meteorites plummeting from the sky, slamming into the earth, will be so intense, one after another, similar to how a fig tree casts its unripe figs upon the ground when shaken by a great wind. All of this is happening at the same time. People are going to run in sheer terror, but there's nowhere to go. There's no escape, the whole world is in total chaos. Imagine the unbelievable destruction that it would create.
In Isaiah 13, the prophet Isaiah writes what the Lord revealed to him, "Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless."
In Mark 13 he writes, "And the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken." This is going to be a worldwide catastrophic event!
Then in verse 14, John describes "The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up." The sky is going to rip in two, literally torn down the middle, split apart, like a scroll when it is rolled up. The sky, that once was so familiar to us, is forever changed. In fact, it's gone. Though this language may seem strange to us today, it would have been well understood to those in John's day, this was a grim announcement that the end of the world was at hand. God’s judgment against a rebellious ungodly people. Yet they could find comfort in knowing that God still was in control.
Then, he says "And every mountain and island were moved out of their places." This is difficult to even conceive. The crust of the earth, now unstable, begins to move and shift, and the faults split, and the volcanic gases come out, the heavens will appear to be moving in the opposite direction. People are going to be scared to death.
In 1992, Newsweek, had a fascinating cover story, it was entitled "THE SCIENCE OF DOOM." The article inside described that on March 23,1989, an asteroid a half mile across missed Earth by just 700,000 miles. No one saw it coming; if it had arrived a mere six hours later it might have wiped out civilization. "Earth runs its course about the sun in a swarm of asteroids," says astronomer Donald Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, "Sooner or later, our planet will be struck by one of them." A NASA panel estimated in January that there are between 1,000 and 4,000 asteroids that cross Earth's orbit and are bigger than a half mile across (the size that could send civilization back to the Stone Age)".
The article also says, "It comes screaming out of the sky like the Scud from hell, bigger than a mountain and packed with more energy than the world's entire nuclear arsenal. It hits the atmosphere at 100 times the velocity of a speeding bullet, and less than a second later smacks into the ground with an explosive force of 100 million megatons of TNT. The shock wave from the crash landing, traveling 20,000 miles an hour, levels everything within 150 miles. Simultaneously a plume of vaporized stone shoots up from the impact site, blasting a hole through the atmosphere and venting hot debris. The vaporized rock cools, condensing back into hundreds of millions of tiny stones. As they streak to the ground over the next hour, they heat up, and soon the very air glows hot pink. Steam hisses from green leaves; buildings and even trees burst into flame. Nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere combine into nitric acid; any surviving life, crawling out of a burrow or cave, gets pelted with a rain as caustic as the acid in a car battery."
And, no one saw it coming. It happened in the "twinkling of an eye." Let that sink in! Astrophysicist Jack Hills of Los Alamos National Laboratory said, "If an asteroid 600 feet across fell in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, it would produce a massive tidal wave 600 feet high on both the European and North American coasts. The impact would make entire continents burst into flame, block
sunlight, and make agriculture impossible. Humans would go the way of
trilobites." Scientists have already determined we are on a collision course. They already know that there are killer asteroids and comets are out there, and someday, one will be on a collision course with earth. They know it's going to come, and they can’t prevent it.
And all God has to do is say the word and it will all happen. God arranged the universe instantaneously, with just a word, and He will disarrange it, just as instantaneously.
In verse 15, "Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains."
Here, John describes all of the elite of the world. The kings, and the great men, and the commanders, and the rich, and the strong. Then, he says "every slave and free man." In other words, this is going to involve everyone all over the world. It doesn't matter if you’re the elite or the common man, you're going to be impacted by it! This is going to be way beyond anything the world has ever imagined! And, no one, absolutely no one, is going to be left out of it.
The prophet Isaiah said in chapter 2, "Men will go into caves of the rocks and into holes of the ground
before the terror of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble. In that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold,which they made for themselves to worship, in order to go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs before the terror of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble."
In Luke 21, Jesus said "But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
We've seen the reason for their fear, now we see their reaction, they "hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they *said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb."
It's a death wish, they would rather die than face God. They think if the mountains will crush them, but they won't die. Since the time of Jesus, people have heard the gospel. Many teachers of the Word of God have pleaded with people surrender to Christ. And, for as long as I have been preaching the gospel, I have been warning people over and over and over again, this stuff is coming folks. I have continuously prayed they would cry of for mercy, asking for forgiveness. It's not some concocted fairy tale as some would have you believe.
Yet, because they are deceived, the world refuses to repent. They refuse to turn to Christ, confess their sin and repent. And, in the Great Tribulation, many still will not repent, they will blaspheme God, even as the trumpet judgments will be upon them. Although seven trumpets contain more judgments from God upon the world, however, they are still not the full Wrath of God, which is poured out at the end of the Tribulation period. The wrath of God isn’t spiteful or vindictive, but rather God’s holy response to unrepentant sinners, suffering they've brought upon themselves. The trumpet and bowl judgments, will be revealed later in Revelation
Verse 17 says, "For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"
Malachi 3 says basically the same thing, "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears?"
On that day, all people, everywhere, will be made equal before the Lord Jesus Christ, and all will bow before Him and confess Him as Lord.
In Closing..
Out of all the chaos and confusion, will come the new heavens and the new earth. So, while the world is in sheer terror, when the redeemed see this, they know the kingdom of God is coming!
If people hear the gospel today, and they go on sinning willfully after knowing the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. And, if you reject Christ, this is what you will have to look forward to, if you're alive. So, if you’re an unbeliever, be warned.
If you’re already a Christian, you best be thankful that you’re going to escape it. You not only to be thankful, you need to be faithful to share the gospel with the lost. We are called to evangelize the world, because we understand what is coming!
I am compelled to share the message of the gospel, to bring to them to Jesus Christ, that they might be saved, delivered from these horrifying events.
May it be so..And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen