Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #17 of Revelation, chapter 6, and we are going to be reading Revelation 6:12:
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
We were discussing the earthquake in our last study and we saw how God uses an earthquake with the resurrection. We saw that in Matthew, chapter 27 and chapter 28. It is not a surprise that God would do that because when man dies, where does he go? He goes into the ground. He goes into the dust of the earth and man is dust – he returns to the dust, as far as his physical body is concerned. Therefore, God discusses the use of an “earthquake” or God brings about an “earthquake” to open the ground and to bring up the dead.
Of course, with the Lord Jesus, while He was demonstrating what He had done from the foundation of the world, when He went to the cross and died and was buried in the tomb, there was a “great earthquake” that we read about in Matthew 28 that rolled away the stone. In a sense, the image is that it opened up the ground so Christ could come forth. Remember the Bible language is that He had descended into the “heart of the earth” and the resurrection is His ascending up into the heavenlies. He is no longer held by death and hell. They have no hold upon Him and so the earthquake is presenting us with that image of God bringing forth from the ground those that had died for or those that “death and hell” had laid claim to and the Lord is saying, “No, you may not have this one, based upon what the Lord Jesus Christ has done.” All of the elect souls also will rise from the dead. “Death and hell” have no claim upon them; they cannot hold them and there is no victory for the grave, but, rather, Christ is victorious. And the earthquake opening the ground is a picture of opening up the grave and opening up “hell” itself and rescuing the people of God from the fate they would have suffered if it were not for the grace and mercy of the Lord.
In our verse in Revelation 6:12, the Lord Jesus, the Lamb, is opening the sixth seal of the seven that seal up the Book, the Bible. At the time the sixth seal is opened, the Bible says there was “a great earthquake.” Now the opening of the seals are not chronological; God is just using each opening of a seal as a way of teaching us something about His program of salvation and judgment, the program of the Gospel and of His Word for this world. And there is a “great earthquake” at the time the sixth seal is opened and “and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.” We are familiar with this language and we get more and more familiar with it as we continue on. We know that this language identifies with the language of Matthew 24:29:
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
That means that identification is being made with Revelation 6:12 and the following verses in that chapter and with the Matthew 24:29 account of what takes place “immediately after the tribulation.” We are also aware that the tribulation that is being referred to there is a twenty three year tribulation. It began on May 21, 1988. That ended the church age and began God’s judgment on the churches and congregations of the world and it continued for an exact 23 years until May 21, 2011. On that 8,400th day, the tribulation ended and, according to Matthew 24:29 and other verses, “immediately after” the sun was darkened.
It is not, of course a literal reference, but it is referring to Christ, to God Himself, as the Bible relates that great light of the sun that enlightens the world to the Lord Jesus Himself, who is the Light of the Gospel. Immediately after the tribulation, the light of the Gospel (Christ) was darkened all over the face of the earth. This fits in very well with the other language that God relates to that very day with the door to heaven shutting, as Christ is the door. It is just indicating that God is through saving people; He has saved all those He had intended to save, all whose names were found in the Lamb’s Book of Life. They became saved; they were redeemed and their safety was guaranteed.
And “immediately after the tribulation,” God then ended His salvation program; that is what it means when we read that the sun is darkened and the moon is not giving its light and the stars have fallen; they are the lights that God has placed in the heavens above and they represent the Gospel lights that God had placed in the spiritual darkness of the world.
We will discuss this more as we continue on, looking at these few verses here and we will discuss why Revelation 6:12 speaks of the sun being “black as sack cloth of hair” and the moon becoming “as blood.” Those are interesting ways to describe it. We do not find that language everywhere. In Matthew 24:29 it just said the sun was darkened; it did not say anything about “sack cloth of hair.” It said the moon is not giving its light, but it did not mention that it “became as blood.” So we will take a closer look at that as we go on.
But right now we want to look at the “great earthquake.” And since the earthquake is joined together with the language of the darkened sun, and so on, and we know that the darkened sun and moon and stars is spiritual in nature, then that helps us to understand that the “great earthquake” must also be spiritual. It would not harmonize and it would not fit together to have the Lord refer to a literal, physical “earthquake” and then a spiritual darkening of the sun and moon and the stars falling. In order for us to understand this, we must realize that what is said about the “great earthquake” also is spiritual.
So let us look at some places where we read of a “great earthquake;” not just an earthquake, but a “great earthquake.” Those are the words that are used here. The word great is megas, from which we get our English word “mega,” as used in megaphone (to make a sound louder or greater). This is megas seismos. The word seismos is probably also familiar to you. So this is a “great earthquake,” a megas seismos, and we find the same words in Revelation 11:13-14:
And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.
That is very important for us to take note of – that the great earthquake mentioned in Revelation 11:13, in which the tenth part of the city fell and 7,000 were slain, is spoken of in connection with the “second woe.” Once the great earthquake occurs, then it can be said that “the second woe is past.” The second woe is part of three woes overall that Revelation 8:13 mentioned: “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth.” Then we read of the “first woe” in Revelation 9, as the fifth angel and sixth angel and seventh angel sound and each sound identifies with a “woe.” And in Revelation 9, the fifth angel sounded and that would initiate the first “woe,” and notice it says in Revelation 9:2:
And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
Once, again, we find the sun is being darkened and it is darkened at the fifth trumpet sound, the first “woe.” And over in Revelation 9:12, as the Lord describes these locusts that are loosed for five months and bringing torment, it says:
One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.
When we study the “three woes,” we come to learn that they are sounding simultaneously. The first, second and third “woes” or the fifth, sixth and seventh trumpets began to blow on the Day of Judgment, May 21, 2011, “immediately after the tribulation, ” and according to Matthew 24:29, the sun is darkened and that is when the first “woe” would take place, just as Revelation 9:2 tells us, the sun is darkened. And Revelation 11:13-14 is referring to a “great earthquake” and we know from Revelation 6:12 that the “great earthquake” and the “darkening of the sun” are happening at the same time. This helps us to see that the first and second woes (even though God has spread them out over a couple of chapters, as far as discussing them) are happening simultaneously; they are happening at the same time. They are describing events that are unfolding on the Day of Judgment, beginning May 21, 2011, and continuing throughout the prolonged period of Judgment Day, however long that might be. We suspect it will be 1,600 days. So the “great earthquake” of Revelation 11:13 identifies with Judgment Day, beginning on May 21, 2011.
It is also important for us to understand, where it refers to “the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand,” that these are references which normally would relate to the true believers, as the “tenth part” has to do with a tithe and a tithe relates to the true believers. So, too, “seven thousand” is a number that comes right out of the Old Testament, where the Lord states that He had reserved to Himself “seven thousand” that had “not bowed the knee to Baal” and that means they were faithful men.
But, now, in the Day of Judgment, the “tenth part” and the “seven thousand” are coming under judgment. Does this mean the true believers are coming under God’s judgment? No. We can understand this, just as we understand the “third part.” Typically, as God would refer to the “third part,” for instance, in Zechariah 13:8-9, He uses the identification of the “third part” to relate to the true believers, but in Revelation 8, the “third part” has to do with the churches and congregations where the true believers were traditionally found.
And, likewise, the “tenth part” and the “seven thousand” also identify with true believers, but now it is just used to describe those that would somehow relate to the true believers, but are not true believers themselves. And May 21, 2011 brought judgment upon all those “professed Christians” in the churches and congregations, no matter how closely they resembled the true believers, but now it became very evident that they were tares; they had refused to hearken to God’s warning to come out of the churches and once Judgment Day came, there was no hope for them and they were bundled as tares for the burning and the “spiritual earthquake” destroyed them. The earthquake slew them in the Day of Judgment.
Let us also go to Revelation, chapter 16. Revelation 16 is a chapter is full of information describing the outpouring of the last seven vials full of the wrath of God. We read in Revelation 16:17-19:
And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
Now we are helped in understanding exactly when this “great earthquake” is taking place because the earthquake (the megas seismos) is happening at the time of Babylon’s fall. Babylon, historically, fell to the Medes and Persians after a seventy year period in which God used Babylon as a means of punishing His rebellious people Judah. He had His people taken captive to Babylon. At the end of the seventy year period, King Cyrus, the King of the Medes and Persians, conquered Babylon and shortly thereafter released the captives and delivered the Jews.
That is a picture of the Great Tribulation period; the seventy year period typifies the Great Tribulation and that would mean that Babylon’s fall at the end of the seventy years identifies with the end of the Great Tribulation. And, again, what do we find in connection to the references to the fall of Babylon (that can only identify with the end of the Great Tribulation on May 21, 2011)? We find the language of a “great earthquake” and God beginning to give Babylon the “cup of His wrath.”
And that is what we have also learned: God first, in beginning the judgment at the house of God, gave the churches the cup of His wrath and then following His judgment on the churches (as He utilized Satan and his emissaries to bring about that judgment), then God gave the cup of His wrath to the nations of the world and that would point to the kingdom of Satan, as the kingdom of Babylon typifies the kingdom of Satan. And that is when the Lord refers to a “great earthquake.”
We also read, concerning Babylon, in Jeremiah 50:45-46:
Therefore hear ye the counsel of JEHOVAH, that he hath taken against Babylon; and his purposes, that he hath purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall make their habitation desolate with them. At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations.
Now when the earth “moves,” that is an earthquake; that is exactly what happens during an earthquake: the ground shakes, but we do not just have to just assume that because the word translated as “moved” here is Strong’s #7493 and it is also translated as “earthquake” and, therefore, we could read this verse this way: “At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth quakes, and the cry is heard among the nations.”
Again, at the “taking of Babylon,” the time of Babylon’s fall (when the “servants” of God that God raised up to bring judgment on the people called by His name) when Babylon’s time came to drink of the cup of His wrath, then God speaks of an “earthquake” occurring. It is in the spiritual realm. There is no physical earthquake taking place – that was our mistake; that was our error in thinking that on May 21, 2011 at the end of the Great Tribulation there would be the rapture of believers and the resurrection of the dead, because we assumed that the true believers could not remain upon the earth during the Day of Judgment. That was a wrong assumption, as we have learned from many places in the Bible.
It has been God’s plan all along to keep His people on the earth that they may live through the Day of Judgment. He has many reasons for doing this. One is to test His people in a final, severe test, so that they can be “proven” to be true gold and silver (to be true believers) and then He would take them at the end, purified, into His kingdom, and so on. That would be one reason. And, also, God has a plan to “make manifest” what He had done with them, as the Lord Jesus died for their sins from the foundation of the world and all the elect were in Christ as Jesus went through that wrath, in a figure, and God likens all those as Jesus died for as having gone through it with Him. This is the meaning, when Jesus said to a couple of His disciples, “Are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” And then He answered His own question and said, “Ye shall be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with.” That is because, as baptism points to the washing away of sin, they were baptized along with Christ (and so was every other child of God) with the baptism that He was baptized with in the fires of the wrath of God, as He died on their behalves.
So, all of the true believers have stood before God in judgment in the Person of Christ and, yet, now at the end of the world, in the Day of Judgment, God has us remaining upon the earth, living in the Day of Judgment. Yet, the wrath of God is not touching us. The punishment for sinners has not come upon us. We are “unmarked.” There is no anger of God coming down upon us at all for any one of ours sins and this is “making manifest” that we have already stood for judgment. This is demonstrating what God did for our sakes before the foundation of the world.
Well, that leaves only two more places I would like to look at concerning a spiritual “earthquake.” We are not going to have time to go into detail during this study, but let us at least read the verses in Acts 16:25-30:
And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
Now this has got to be one of the most mysterious and unusual earthquakes every recorded, as we are very familiar today with the images that the news media carry after an earthquake – all the destruction and all the buildings that are destroyed and whole cities that are leveled. It is just awful, awful destruction, but with this earthquake – and it is said to be a “great earthquake,” not a minor earthquake – the foundation of the prison was “shaken,” but the building did not come tumbling down and the walls were not destroyed. All that happened was that “all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.” Now can you imagine any earthquake more unusual than that? It only freed the prisoners.