How is the 6th seal in Revelation 6:12-17 to be understood?

Lest Read it here and examine it, A great earthquake; (and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth): In the Bible, celestial disturbances are often connected with the coming of the Messiah. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zephaniah and Jesus Himself all describe such things.

A passage from Zephaniah is an example: The great day of the LORD is near; it is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the LORD is bitter; there the mighty men shall cry out. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers. (Zephaniah 1:14-16)

Or, as in Joel 2:10-11: The sun and moon grow dark, and stars diminish their brightness … for the day of the LORD is great and terrible; who can endure it?

Those who regard these events as history have to spiritualize them. One example is Adam Clarke, who says this great earthquake is "A most stupendous change in the civil and religious constitution of the world. If it refer to Constantine the Great, the change that was made by his conversion to Christianity might be very properly represented under the emblem of an earthquake."

The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth: It is best to regard these pictures as real, but poetic. John isn't using technically precise scientific language, but he simply describes what he saw.

Point 1) And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves: All people are equally brought low by God's wrath. The judgment is all the more profound because it is the wrath of the Lamb.

Point 2) "It is the wrath of love, the wrath of sacrificial love which, having done the absolute utmost for us and our salvation, tells us as nothing else could the certainty with which evil awaits its doom at the hand of God." (Torrance)

P-3) Hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne: They hide not only from the terror of the judgments, but from the face of Him who sits on the throne. "What sinners dread most is not death, but the revealed presence of God." (Swete)

So ? Observations: How do the seals fit in God's prophetic plan?

1. There are many different opinions, but it seems best to say that the seals, trumpets, and bowls that will be described later are not strictly sequential events. Chronologically, the trumpets do not follow the seals and the bowls do not follow the trumpets.

a. The first six seals are "a summary of the judgments distributed over the whole book; a brief summary of what will occur in 'the day of the Lord,' up the time of His actual Apocalypse or Unveiling in chapter 19." (Bullinger)

b. That span begins with the revelation of the Antichrist (the first seal) and it concludes with the revealing of the face of Him who sits on the throne (the seventh seal).

2. Do the seals represent conditions immediately before the end, or more general conditions prevailing over a more extended period, up until the return of Jesus?

a. There is a sense in which we can say that the they represent both - dictators, war, famine, death and persecution have been familiar throughout all history, but not to the magnitude and severity with which they will be present in the Great Tribulation.

b. "The wars and famines predicted in the second and third seals are not unfamiliar events in the history of the world, but never before since the time of Noah has a judgment so devastating been consummated as to destroy one-fourth of the earth's population at one stroke." (Walvoord)

c. As far as the seals are concerned, they will be an intense amplification of "business as usual." God will give mankind over to his fallen nature - and more!

i. This is not the case with some of the trumpet and bowl judgments of later chapters. They are completely unique manifestations of God's judgment.

3. The sixth seal concludes with a valid question: Who is able to stand? Only the believer can stand before this great judgment, the one who is justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

a. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. (Romans 5:1-2)

b. I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received and in which you stand. (1 Corinthians 15:1)

c. Testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand. (1 Peter 5:12)

d. The believer can stand in the face of this great wrath of God because Jesus already bore the wrath the believer deserved.

You can go to Matthew 24:12-29, which describe the time of tribulation and how the continence of people would be. Daniel, 10:20,21 & chapter 12 is the showing of the future signs of the Great Tribulation that is revealed to him, but he was to seal up the prophecy. The Angel of the Lord came to John in Revelations and told him to open up his mouth and reveal the prophecy of the last times (days).

It is the last part of the Nuclear WW III Tribulation Period .

"Literal and figurative quakings of the earth are mentioned a number of times in the Bible. In his great prophecy about the sign of his presence in Kingdom power, Jesus forecast “earthquakes in one place after another.” These would be part of “a beginning of pangs of distress.” Since 1914, with earth’s population exploding into the thousands of millions, literal temblors have contributed significantly to the distresses of our times. (Matthew 24:3, 7, 8) Nevertheless, even though they fulfill prophecy, those earthquakes have been natural, physical disasters. They are preliminary to the great symbolic earthquake of Revelation 6:12. This, indeed, comes as the devastating finale to a series of advance tremors that shake Satan’s human earthly system of things to its foundations."

Further, "these critical last days have been a time of earthquakes—literal and figurative. (2 Timothy 3:1) But not one of these quakings is the final great shaking that John sees at the opening of the sixth seal. The time for advance tremors is ended. There now comes a great earthquake that is totally new to human experience. It is so great an earthquake that the upheavals and convulsions it causes cannot be measured by the Richter scale or by any other human gauge. This is no mere local shock but a cataclysmic shaking that devastates the entire “earth,” that is, all depraved human society.

Others of Jehovah’s prophets foretold such an earthquake and its catastrophic consequences. For example, about 820 B.C.E., Joel spoke of “the coming of the great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah,” stating that then “the sun itself will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood.” Later, he adds these words: “Crowds, crowds are in the low plain of the decision, for the day of Jehovah is near in the low plain of the decision. Sun and moon themselves will certainly become dark, and the very stars will actually withdraw their brightness. And out of Zion Jehovah himself will roar, and out of Jerusalem he will give forth his voice. And heaven and earth certainly will rock; but Jehovah will be a refuge for his people, and a fortress for the sons of Israel.” (Joel 2:31; 3:14-16) This rocking could apply only to Jehovah’s execution of judgment during the great tribulation. (Matthew 24:21) So the parallel account at Revelation 6:12, 13 would logically have the same application.—See also Jeremiah 10:10; Zephaniah 1:14, 15.

Some 200 years after Joel, the prophet Habakkuk said in prayer to his God: “O Jehovah, I have heard the report about you. I have become afraid, O Jehovah, of your activity. In the midst of the years O bring it to life! In the midst of the years may you make it known. During the agitation, to show mercy may you remember.” What would that “agitation” be? Habakkuk goes on to give a graphic description of the great tribulation, saying of Jehovah: “He stood still, that he might shake up the earth. He saw, and then caused nations to leap. . . . With denunciation you went marching through the earth. In anger you went threshing the nations. Yet, as for me, I will exult in Jehovah himself; I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:1, 2, 6, 12, 18) What a mighty shaking Jehovah will cause in all the earth when he threshes the nations!

Ezekiel too foretold that when Gog of Magog (the debased Satan) makes his final attack upon God’s people, Jehovah will cause “a great quaking” to occur “in the soil of Israel.” (Ezekiel 38:18, 19) Though literal earthquakes may be involved, we should remember that Revelation is presented in signs. This prophecy and the other prophecies cited are highly symbolic. Hence, the opening of the sixth seal appears to disclose the culmination of all shakings of this earthly system of things—the great earthquake in which all humans opposed to Jehovah God’s sovereignty are destroyed."

What she said...