The Opening of the Seals

REVELATION- Victory in Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ch. 6- The Opening of the Seals

The scroll from chapter 5 is sealed with 7 seals. It holds all the future of God’s children. But before this plan can be unleashed, it must be opened. Jesus the Lamb has shown to be the only one worthy of this task, and everyone and everything has broken out in praise!

Seals such as these make known what was previously hidden. The first four seals will use a horse, the 5 will reveal the souls of martyrs and the 6th will reveal judgment on the Roman Empire. The 7th will not appear until Ch. 8.

Here is an easy chart for the horses:
• White- Conquest (possibly Jesus)
• Red- persecution and war
• Black- economic struggle and discrimination
• Pale (ashen) - death, plague, disease, famine etc…

Let us get into the seals:

1st Seal

John uses thunder often to get attention to an event. One of the beasts or cherubim speaks: “COME!”. He is talking like a director of a play. The seals are being played out for John, but each rider needs a “signal caller” when it is their turn. “Come” seems to be their cue.
The 1st horse and rider is white--- used by John to indicate among other things, purity, holiness and victory. Here, he indicates victory! Many believe it is Satan…but to me, it makes most sense that it is Jesus…as our victorious warrior! Once again, I think John is assuring these Christians that they WILL be victorious if they only stay with Jesus. Before John unleashes the “bad news” seals, he is once again assuring the Christians they will win! Because, it seems at the time that the Roman Empire is going to win. It kinda’ serves as a halftime pep talk! “Stay faithful to Jesus (even unto death) and you will win this fight!!!!!!”

He does not say we will be safe from persecution, disease, discrimination, martyrdom, famine etc…..but he does assure the final result. So the first seal represents conquest……that of victory of the Christian! This would have been EXTREMELY relevant to who he was writing!

2nd Seal

Now we have the red rider and horse! Red usually is symbolic of bloodshed. I do not think this to be any different here. It could be either from war or bloodshed. Most likely here it focuses on the persecution that was taking place and would intensify! The Bible shows that OVER TIME, Christians will always shed much blood. This verse makes it very clear that NO ONE but God has creative power: “power was given to him that sat on…”! Satan can create nothing! The rider could be Satan, Emperor Domitian or anything else that persecutes…but the point is, GOD gave them the power to do it!

3rd Seal

Out comes the black horse. Usually black represents sorrow and/or mourning. Here, it is used to symbolize economic discrimination against Christians! It will be a time of sorrow because of the lack of food causing starvation. It is not a widespread famine, as we can tell from the statement that “oil” and “wine” will exist. And the pair of balances shows that rider is weighing things…separating them and sanctioning them!

Vs. 6 talks about “measures”. A measure was a dry measure of less than a quart and represents about as much as would support a person for just one day. The penny or shilling was one day’s wages. In other words: this refers to a persons whole days wage going to a quantity of wheat that will only last a day! AT this rate, how could you support yourself and family? What about the other necessities other than food?

This is NOT a famine. Just a certain group of people are going to be hard-pressed…the Christians! There will be scarcity of the necessities of life!

Once again, I still see God being in control. By the fact that there will still be oil and wine, it seems that God is putting limits to the amount of destruction this seal will bring! He is in control!!

4th Seal

Next comes the pale horse. The word used for pale here is used 4 times in the NT. It can be translated to the color of a person in sickness or death. Here, the rider represents just that: DEATH, with Hades riding its tailcoats!

Once again though, “power was given” by God. Even death cannot go where God doesn’t want it!!!!! Once again, this SHOULD be comforting to the Christians being written to.

The death would be from many sources: war, Persecution, famine and starvation, pestilence, and wild beasts. There seems to almost be a progression here. Follow this:
War brings famine, which in turn brings pestilence, and afterwards things are so ravaged wild beasts come in and clean up!

God is reminding them though, that he is in control, and encouraging :unto death faithfulness”!!!!!

5th Seal

Here John sees the souls of martyrs. They are under the altar. (just like in the OT where the blood of sacrifice victims was poured at the base of the altar). These people died still faithful. There blood was shed, and their physical lives ended..BECAUSE OF THEIR FAITHFULNESS TO GOD!!!!

The martyrs are crying out to God! Not necessarily for personal vindication. They seem much more concerned with God’s cause rather than their own. They want God’s judgment brought against sin to show his sovereign will!

It is important to know that the answer to their pleas will begin in Chapter 8! God is aware of what is going on and is aware of their cries. He will answer these by finally bringing judgment upon Rome!

6th Seal

Finally.. will Rome get theirs??? The 6th seal describes judgment that is coming upon God’s enemy. The question here really is “which judgment??”. Many feel John is describing the FINAL judgment that comes at the worlds’ end. Others feel he is describing the judgment on the Roman Empire. The only way to correctly determine which he is speaking of, is to look at the context in which it is mentioned.

The context seems to me to be describing the judgment upon Rome. The context is the opening of the 6th seal. We have one more to go and then trumpets will be blown to warn the wicked before God’s bowls of wrath are poured out. This context could not be describing FINAL judgment. The 7th seal and trumpets must precede. I believe he is talking about the Roman Empire! It does not fall until around A.D. 395, but it DOES BEGIN its fall in John’s day! Also, in describing these judgments he uses language which was commonly used to describe actions AGAINST NATIONS, in his time!

It ends after some intense descriptions with vs. 16-17. Here we have all men of the earth and of power and all stature basically trembling and hiding in fear from what they know is coming! They realize his wrath IS UPON THEM and they ask “Who will be able to stand through this??????”. This answer will come in Ch. 7.

It is important to note that in all the imagery, you see not one person yet hurt. No actual judgment has yet to fall, but a terrible fear grips man’s heart. They realize God is fed up with them and their evil empire, and his judgments are soon to be opened up!!!