Sat, Mar 01, 2025 11:22AM • 50:30
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Revelation, sixth seal, martyrdom, tribulation, vengeance, persecution, resurrection, Roman Empire, Parthian Empire, Euphrates River, locusts, destruction, wrath, prayers, seal of God.
The last time we had just gotten into chapter six, the seven seals. I’m just going to backtrack a little bit here. The fifth seal is martyrdom. So we’ve seen the scenes of military, economic and ecological disaster, and now we’re transported up to the back to the the throne room, and there’s an altar there.
And I’ve always asked the question, “How many souls can you fit under an altar? Maybe as many as angels can dance on the head of a pin?” I don’t know anyway. I believe this is symbolic imagery, such as when God tells Cain that Abel’s blood was crying out to Him.
So they’re desiring revenge. And God doesn’t say, “No, you shouldn’t do that. You’re Christians.” Instead He says, Okay, take a rest break. Once all of the other believers who are about to be killed are killed, then I’ll avenge all of you at the same time.
So vengeance is the Lord’s. “Vengeance is Mine, says the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 32:35) So being a follower of Jesus is not necessarily for the faint of heart.That Is the is the point of that message, John and Jesus, who co-wrote this letter, are trying to warn the church of exactly what he said to his disciples. “In the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
So first comes the tribulation, then comes the overcoming, right? Always in that order, for some reason. (Maybe because Jesus had to die first in order to be resurrected? Just saying.) So the theme of persecution in chapter seven comes back in chapters 11 through 14. It culminates in a call in chapter 14, verses 12 and 13.
This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
So this theme of resting from their labor after they’ve been killed, hearkens back to chapter six, right, the fifth seal. There’s lots of repetition going on in this book, and I think we finished at the fifth seal.
So now we’re going to start with the sixth one, verse 12 of chapter six.
I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us[f] from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their[g] wrath has come, and who can withstand it?” – Revelation 6:12-17
So the sixth seal, with its signs in the heavens and violent earthquakes that literally move mountains and islands (which are also basically mountains), is basically just a warning that the real tribulation is about to begin.
When Jesus talks about these events in the gospels, He has good news for believers in the midst of the warning about hard times coming.
“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” – Luke 21:25-28
Note that the timeframe is the same as in the Revelation 6 passage before. This time of heavenly signs is a signal to the believer that redemption is near at the same time that it is a warning to the unbeliever that time is almost up for them in their evildoing ways.
It feels like God is saying to the world that has turned away from Him, “So you want to play rough, do you?”
So now we have an interlude after this,a pause in, in the story flow here in Revelation chapter seven.
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel. – Revelation 7:1-4
I don’t know why the tribe of Dan is missing, but each of the named tribes (Including Joseph, named in place of Manasseh’s brother Ephraim) is represented by 12,000 people.
There are at least a couple of significant things about these numbers. First, 12 is the number of tribes of Israel, and therefore is symbolic of Israel, as will be seen later in Revelation, such as in the number of stars in a crown and the dimensions of the city that comes down from heaven.
Secondly, a Roman legion was originally designated to have 1,000 soldiers in it. Over time, of course, it became harder to maintain that number, but imagine if they were able to do so. At any given time in Roman history, Rome was able to field from 24 to 36 legions across its vast domain. Consider how efficient this army was compared to modern armies in controlling Europe, northern Africa and the Arab world up to the western side of the Euphrates River. (When I joined the Canadian Armed Forces its strength was approximately 80,000 men and women in uniform.)
In Matthew 26:52-54, while being arrested, Jesus tells Peter to put down his sword, saying “Do you not think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”
Imagine, for a moment what a Roman Emperor would think if he saw Jesus arriving with 144 legions of His followers. The worst part, from the Roman perspective, is that these followers have already been killed by the Romans and are back from the dead! That is enough to chill the blood of the most hardened solder.
In a vision reminiscent of Ezekiel 9:1-11, an angel comes and marks them with a seal. In Ezekiel the mark prevents them from being killed by God’s avenging angels. We will find the ones in Revelation with God’s seal on their foreheads are offered a different kind of protection.
Before we get there, the people standing before the throne give thanks and praise to God and the Lamb. This is followed by praises and glory to God by all of the attending elders and angels around the throne. But the praise-party roster is far from complete.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. Revelation 7:9
Robed in white, with palm branches in hand, they are celebrating a great victory.The branches remind me of the celebrations of the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:33-43). This celebration reminded the Israelites that God had taken them out of Egypt, where God sustained them as they dwelt in temporary shelters for 40 years until they entered the Promised Land. Note that these are Gentiles offering the same sort of triumphal gathering as the Jews did when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
More praise ensues, followed by one of the elders asking John if he knows who the white-robed ones are and where they come from. After John defers to the elder, the latter, he responds,
“These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore,
“they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
will shelter them with his presence.
16 ‘Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’[a]
nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’[b]
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
In other words, these are people who won the war by losing their lives. As a military strategy, that makes no sense. But as a salvation strategy, it mirrors Jesus’ own victory by death and resurrection.
This is sort of like the old story of the man telling his grandkids about the time he and his friend were surrounded by an enemy and had no means of escape. The grandchild asks, “What happened to you and your friend?” to which grandpa gives the punchline, “We died, of course.”
The difference is that Jesus is not “pulling our leg” with this vision. Resurrection is real, but getting there is not easy. You would have expected from other passages to hear, especially as Evangelicals, that Jesus washed us in his blood. But no, these are they who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.
It’s an active participation. It’s not something being done to them. They are witnesses for Jesus. They’re dying like he did, dying for the same cause, not necessarily in the same manner as Jesus. Paul, because he was Roman citizen, was beheaded. You don’t, you don’t crucify Roman citizens. But those who are not Roman citizens, well, they’re fair name. You could torture them as much as you want.
So I noticed while I was doing a word search in Revelation three, verse 10, about the hour of “trial,” that the church in Philadelphia was to be protected from. It’s the same word that’s usually translated “temptation” in the Lord’s Prayer. Lead us not into temptation or trial, yeah, but deliver us from evil.
So unfortunately, the deliverance from evil comes after the evil.
So the the hour of trial. Yeah. So, so some people think, of course, that that means that that means that they get to be raptured before things get bad. We get to say, take you to court just to release you. That only happens in certain liberal cities in the United States.
So there’s a reason God has to wipe away every tear and that they will never suffer a thirst or hunger again. This implies that they have suffered thirst and hunger before they died, which puts the chink in the armor of the health and wealth gospel, of course.
At this point you might want to ask yourself where the raptured saints are in this vision.
Okay, so now we can move on to chapter eight verses one to six. I call this section “incensed prayer.”
When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
Here we have the fire from the altar that the souls are under right? What do you think? What kind of prayers do you think he is smelling before he throws the censer down to the earth the prayers of His saints?
Do you think the prayers are universally “forgive them, Lord, they don’t know what they’re doing?” or, more likely, “Avenge us, Lord! We found that out in the fifth seal. These are the the tortured screams of the martyrs, their prayers, and when God smells that his response is to start the vengeance.
He, smelled the incense, he’s heard the prayers, and now it’s time to answer them. So the act of throwing the sensor down is what then starts the ball rolling with the trumpets.
The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.
The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.
The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.
As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!” – Revelation 8:7-13
Notice the patterns of the number 3. The last three trumpets are “three woes.” The sun and moon have their light blocked out for 1/3 of the day and night. One third of the waters become bitter. The next three woes will intensify the suffering of the world.
So what does that sound like like if you’re if you’re remembering your biblical history? It sounds like the plagues of Egypt. So what we’re seeing here is is a an exodus event. Now, just for the fun of it, let’s turn to Jeremiah 51 verse, 24.
Before your eyes I will repay Babylon and all who live in Babylonia[e] for all the wrong they have done in Zion,” declares the Lord.
25 “I am against you, you destroying mountain,
you who destroy the whole earth,”
declares the Lord.
“I will stretch out my hand against you,
roll you off the cliffs,
and make you a burned-out mountain.
26 No rock will be taken from you for a cornerstone,
nor any stone for a foundation,
for you will be desolate forever,”
declares the Lord. – Jeremiah 51:24-26
Chapter 18 will talk about the downfall of a city called Babylon the Great. This city functions like Egypt in the original exodus of Israel or Jericho as Israel was entering Canaan. Egypt had to be destroyed as a major power because of their treatment of Israelite slaves. Jericho and the rest of the Canaanites had to be destroyed for the same reasons that God had previously flooded the world and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah – outright evil. Babylon the Great functions like a demonic combination of those peoples.
Chapter Nine begins with two heavyweight contenders for mastery of the world. In the western corner: Abaddon and the Locusts from Hell.
The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer). – Revelation 9:1-11
Locusts from hell have just been unleashed. On one hand, a modern person might assume it involves biological or chemical warfare, but that is not what a first- century person would have assumed.
This is unlikely to be a human attack. We’re told that the torment is caused by the stings. This may be symbolic. So it could be torment in the form of unending toil of subjugated people such as Israel in Egypt. Another possibility could be forced relocation, like Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, tormented for five months.
On the other hand, we do know that Hitler’s SS was attempting to summon demonic forces using ancient artifacts in satanic rituals. I’m not sure, about what this attack is, but it seems to be effective for a time. What we do know is that the leader is the angel of the bottomless pit, known as the Destroyer or Destruction. We’re going to find out more about this guy later in Revelation.
So, so the the first woe kind of looks like a blitzkrieg attack, right? Like Germany in World War Two, the lightning strike attack, which is what the German word blitzkrieg means. Just when things are looking good for the Blitzkrieg, God intervenes by allowing a mighty opponent to arise, thoughtfully drying up the Euphrates River to enable them to enter the territory of their opponent in the west.
And from the Eastern Bloc, the challenger: The Trans-Euphrates Horde.
The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.
The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.
Clues to what the original readers of the letter would have understood about these challengers come from the geography involved and an understanding of history.
It is time for a historical note. In 53 BC, a Roman general named Crassus attempted to add Parthia to the Roman Republic by conquest, since it seemed to work so well for his buddy Julius Ceasar. His 40,000 infantry troops lost in a humiliating fashion against 10,000 Parthian cavalry.
Okay, so, clearly a difference in tactics. Clearly a difference in how they organized it. The worst part about it for the Romans is that this was a task force that was only a small part of the main part of the army, which was being gathered in preparation to meet this threat. So they send basically a reconnaissance force from the Parthian army against the Romans, and to the shock of everybody, not less to the commander of that small force, they completely wiped out the Romans. Even the Parthian general didn’t expect this small group to actually win that battle for them before they could even get the main army there.
Anybody want to guess what colors the Parthians sported on their banners? That’s right. red, dark blue and yellow. So if you’re a first century church member Asia Minor, you know exactly what this is, that this is a foreign invasion by an army dressed exactly like the Parthians.
In terms of arms and tactics, Parthians had some of their horses and lance riders armored in bronze scale armor. Parthian bows were about 30% stronger than the Roman ones, so they could fire and not be hit from a safe distance. So if the Romans put their shields in turtle formation, the Parthians send in a wave heavy horses, the equine equivalent of tanks. The guy on the horse is armored like a like a medieval knight, and they have long lances. So what do they do? They run these armored horses right through the turtle. Romans didn’t have a hope. Okay, so enough of that military history.
Okay, so over the next two centuries, the “barbarian” Parthians occasionally raided a lot of the Middle East with impunity whenever the Romans forgot who they were dealing with. But at one point, even portions of Asia Minor, where the seven churches were located, had been overrun by the Parthians. Needless to say, the seven churches knew what the symbolism was about.
Now that we know who the eastern enemy is, we can tell what the western evil empire is: Rome. Jesus and John are telling the churches that their earthly enemy is the Roman Empire.
Okay, so, so for the modern reader, does this mean that the evil empire will literally be a resurrection of the Roman Empire? For a long time I thought, probably not.
And yet, there’s the book of Daniel. A lot of the imagery from here comes from the book of Daniel. And the book of Daniel predicts that there will be four empires. And the fourth empire is the one that’s going to be destroyed by the by the rock, the stone not cut out by hand. So, so the answer would almost have to be yes, a resurrection of the Roman Empire made up of different nations, which seems inevitable as we see Europe coming together under one political and economic union.
How big is a modern Roman Empire? Well, what territory did it conquer? By the time of Jesus, Caesar took over, Gaul, later, took over Spain and England. (Hadrian’s Wall was put up to divide England and Scotland), and up to the Black Sea.
Think about this. We know that their descendants, who, by the way, went all around the world, England, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, you ever heard a place called the Belgian Congo? Right? So then many places in Africa, North America, South America, those could all be part of the future Rome Empire.
The US disappears?
We don’t know, but we know the descendants of the peoples who had been conquered by Rome have moved all around the world. So will it look like the ancient Roman Empire did back then? Maybe not, but I’m sure it will be at least Europe.
If I were to venture a speculation about a possible turning point, I think what Trump is doing right now might inspire Europe to go it alone. That’s the scary part.
So what’s “good for America” might not be good for the rest of the world, especially when Europe seems to want to poke the Russian bear for whatever bizarre reason. Why on earth do you want to consider making war with Russia, over Ukraine, a non-NATO, non-European Union country, of all things? Perhaps it is because the human heart is desperately wicked, and does not know the way to peace.
The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts. – Revelatio 9:20-21
So the point of all of this is that no matter how bad it gets, there’s no repentance. And then the point of the book of Revelation is to show that there comes a point when that has to stop.
And God, God is the one behind all of this. We hear things about the time of Satan’s wrath, but God is letting Satan do these things. Absolutely. And it’s all following God’s plan.
For example, Satan ends up doing what God allows in the book of Job. But notice that God sets Job up for the test by pointing out Job’s righteousness to Satan. Satan can’t resist challenging God by attacking Job. All Satan ends up accomplishing is to prove that God is right about Job.
And the point in Revelation 9:20-21 is that these people are going to be so hard into that selfishness, so hard into their evil, that even acts of God are not going to drive them out of it. And that’s that’s the main point here, and this is why he’s warning the churches about martyrdom. As the evil grows, the their ability to find and kill Christians increases.
We are warned about that, not only here, but in the book of Daniel. Christians and Jews were and are often still are blamed for all of the evils in the world. That was the case then, and will certainly remain the case until Jesus returns.
John Valade 
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