If the first five chapters of Revelation bring us confusion about symbolic numbers and visions of heaven which are not easily understood (but at least make it clear that worship is central in heaven and God is still sovereign, ruling over all), chapter 6 opens the door to much more frightening topics about the judgment of God. The timing of these events (often relating to Daniel’s vision of ‘seventy weeks’ and Jesus’s discourse about the end times in Matthew 24, notoriously difficult chapters to interpret) is open to debate; the whole notion of the Tribulation and what this really means (and whether the church is still present on earth during this period or has already been raptured by Jesus) are topics which have been debated through the ages without anyone being able to definitively prove their point of view. It can be hard to determine what is exactly meant by the seals being opened, and this is not helped by modern opinions which refuse to believe the fully rounded revelation of God we find in the Bible.
We like the idea that God is love; we are relieved to be able to talk of His mercy, grace, goodness and kindness. Forgiveness and restoration are popular topics. But if we read the Bible fully, we find also that God is a God of judgment, wrath and justice. For us, these things are mutually exclusive and so we prefer to ignore His calls to repentance, His ruthless attitude towards sin and His uncompromising quest to perfect holiness in us. It’s far easier to believe that all roads will eventually lead to God and that all people will eventually be saved. Ease has never been a criterion for right living, however.
The Bible is clear that Jesus is the only way to God (John 14:6) and that the way to relationship with Him comes through His sacrifice on the cross. Revelation 5 has painted a picture of a Lamb on the throne, the lamb being the animal sacrificed for sin in the Old Testament. We have been told of Jesus, ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.’ (Rev 5:9) It should therefore come as no surprise that when the seals are opened, they speak of judgment and terrible times: times of false peace, war, death, famine and scarcity, martyrdom and judgment, because God cannot ignore sin forever. To do so would be a travesty of His character, leaving evil unpunished.
We flinch at the severity of the judgments we see; we wonder how God can still love humanity if He is prepared to allow such suffering; we do not enjoy these visions at all. Ultimately, there are no easy answers to the thorny question of the judgment of God, but the martyrs seen in this chapter asking the perennial human question, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ (Rev 6:10) remind us that there must come a day of reckoning if God is just and true. The ‘great day of wrath’ (Rev 6:17) is not a pleasant topic, but it is found here in the Bible, and if we wish to withstand it and have confidence on the day of judgment, then we must trust in the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world (Rev 13:8) and accept the limitations of our human knowledge and understanding.
