Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #25 of Revelation, chapter 6, and we are going to reading from Revelation 6: 12-14:
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; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
We have been looking at these verses for several studies now and we have seen what spiritual definitions God has given to these celestial bodies, the “sun, moon and stars.” We have seen what they represent. The “sun” represents Eternal God, the “moon” represents the Law of God and the “stars” represent the body of believers, God’s elect people.
Now we have allowed the Bible to define its own terms and to assign spiritual meanings and now we want to go back and look more closely at these statements concerning the “sun, moon and stars.” For instance, “the sun become as black as sackcloth of hair,” then God says, “And the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs.”
We will, Lord willing, look at each one of these statements and we will try to understand them. I hope you are praying for wisdom to understand these things, just as I am praying, because we, of ourselves, cannot understand anything. It is only if it is God’s good pleasure to grant us understanding that we can comprehend anything spiritual, so we approach these verses (and the whole Bible) that way, beseeching the Lord for wisdom – wisdom that must come down from above.
We know that the “sun” is a type of God. Let us look at Psalm 84:11:
For JEHOVAH God is a sun and shield…
God is a “sun.” It is one of the more obvious spiritual designations in the Bible. Of course, the sun is that great light that lightens the earth and the sun gives life to mankind and to all creatures upon the earth, so it would be a type and figure of God who is these things, spiritually. God is the one that enlightens the minds of men through His Word. God is the one that gives eternal life to those that He saves, so it is a very easy spiritual illustration for us to understand. It is a very good picture that God has given concerning Himself. The sun is a representation of Eternal God and the Lord Jesus, as He shines the light of the truth of His Word into this world.
Now let us allow the Bible to guide us as to what that means when God is typified by the sun. It says in Psalm 27:1:
JEHOVAH is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? JEHOVAH is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
“JEHOVAH is my light and my salvation.” Notice how the Lord is joining these two thoughts together: light and salvation. He does the same thing in Psalm 80 and we are going to read a word translated as “shine” in our English language. It is Strong’s # 216 and it is also translated as “light” and a couple of times as “sun,” but primarily it is the word for “light.” It says in Psalm 80:3:
Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine…
It is just like we think of the sun “shining.” That is language we use regarding what kind of day it is: “Oh, it is a beautiful day. The sun is shining.” What does that mean? It means the sun is illuminating the land. It is illuminating the world with its brightness and, here, too, the desire is that God would “cause” His “face to shine,” or to “lighten” and “we shall be saved.” Psalm 80:3 makes that connection: if God were to shine down upon us with the light of His Word, we shall be saved. It is said again in Psalm 80:7:
Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
And, also, in Psalm 80:18:
So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.
And, by the way, that is a good reference for some that say, “Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Well, notice the order of things in Psalm 80:18: God must first “quicken us,” or give us life, and then we will be stirred up to call upon His name.
Then it says in Psalm 80:19:
Turn us again, O JEHOVAH God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
God is linking and joining together “light” with “salvation.” In Isaiah, chapter 9, where the LORD is moving Isaiah the prophet to write of the coming Messiah, He says in Isaiah 9:2:
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Of course, the “light” is spiritual, as this is looking ahead to the coming of Christ when the Lord would enter into this world of darkness and He is the Light of men. He is that great spiritual light that the sun typifies and as it says: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” And that is very true. As Jesus was going about in the days of His ministry and showing the wonderful power and miraculous workings of God in healing people (as an illustration of how God heals sin-sick souls), they saw this “great light” that Isaiah was moved to write about. The world is in darkness and the world is the “shadow of death.” If you look up “darkness” in the Bible, you will find that many times it is related to “death.” They go hand in hand. They are not synonymous, but they are very closely related.
Now in the New Testament, it says in Colossians 1:12-13:
Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
You see, when we were in our sins and we were “the children of wrath, even as others,” we were in “darkness.” We were in Satan’s kingdom and under his authority. We were entrapped and ensnared in the dungeon of sin and, in a real way, we were in submission to the devil himself, but God translated his elect people out of that kingdom of darkness and “into the kingdom of his dear Son,” the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Light. “From darkness to light,” is what the Lord said to the Apostle Paul in Acts 26, when He instructed Paul what he was to do in suffering for His name. It says in Acts 26:17-18:
Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
Now we have these relationships between words that God is establishing – there is the “darkness of this world,” which is the same as the kingdom of Satan; Satan rules over that kingdom and “darkness” identifies with death. Then there is the kingdom of light, the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and when we are translated from the darkness into that kingdom, we enter into the “light.” That is what God is saying here – the Gospel, the Word of God, that was sent forth throughout the church age and the period of the latter rain to seek and to find the lost sheep of the house of Israel accomplished this purpose: it opened up the eyes of the blind (and if you are blind, that means that all you can see is darkness) and it turned them from darkness to light. Now we are “children of the light,” just as the Lord mentioned in 1st Thessalonians 5:2-4:
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
And that is a very important statement because if you are in “darkness,” then you have your eyes shut and you lack understanding. This is why God says of the time of the end: “The wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand.” Why not? It is because they are in darkness; they are spiritually blind; they are spiritually ignorant; they cannot understand the deep, spiritual things of the Word of God. As a matter of fact, they speak evil of them, because God tells us that this is what the wicked do; they “speak evil of the things that they understand not.” And, here, God is saying, “But that is not true of the child of God because you have been taken from the darkness and translated into the kingdom of light.” As it says in 1st Thessalonians 5:4-8:
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
There is quite a difference between someone who dwells in the light and someone who dwells in the darkness. This is the difference that the child of God experiences and feels so deeply as he goes along in his sojourn in this world. It is the difference between a truth and a lie. It is the difference between what the world wants to concentrate on and deems important and what the true believer wants to focus on in his desire to please God. It is the difference between the dark night and the bright day and God’s people dwell in the light of day. They have (spiritual) eyes in their heads and, therefore, they can see and understand the things that God is doing. They realize where they are “in time.” They realize and understand the judgment of God – that we are at the time of the end and that God has opened up His Word and is revealing truths that have been sealed up since they were recorded in the Bible. Now God is opening up these things to the understanding of His people that have (spiritual) eyes to see and (spiritual) ears to hear. Yet, those that do not have eyes to see and ears to hear – those that were never taken from the darkness – do not understand this at all. They may be a “professed Christian” and they may attend church, but they are still in darkness.
Actually, the churches have been brought into the darkness. The churches once had light – they had the presence of Christ, the Light of the world. But when this judgment began (and it began at the house of God), God departed from the churches and left them in spiritual darkness, so it is no wonder they have no interest in these things. They have no understanding of the things that God has brought forth in His Word. They can only quickly find a Bible reference and they think they understand it when they say, “No man knows the day or the hour,” but they have not searched that out as God would have us to search all things and compare those words and see how that phrase is used in other places. If they had done that, they would realize that no man can know anything spiritually concerning the Word of God.
But, anyway, since the sun typifies God and the Lord Jesus Himself and the sun is that which provides light for the world, we can see why it is so important that we understand (properly) when we read of a time when the sun is darkened and let me read Revelation 6:12:
… and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair…
Now “sackcloth” is a type of garment an individual would wear when in mourning. He would put it over him and, in this case, God is using this image to describe the sun itself. The sun, which shines with such brilliance, is as though it had put on a heavy, thick garment of sackcloth of hair and this prevents the light of the sun from shining. It is made black, as God says in Isaiah 50:3:
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
It is a strong emphasis on “blackness” or “darkness” and this is an emphasis that is found repeatedly throughout the Bible concerning the Day of Judgment. It says in Ecclesiastes 12:1-2:
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
We have to read this very carefully, but God, here, is identifying the time when the sun and moon and stars are darkened as “evil days” and even “years,” according to verse 1. This is describing Judgment Day. We will find that there is some difference in language from verse to verse. For instance, Revelation 6:12 speaks of the sun wearing sackcloth and becoming black and we do not find that reference in many places, but one thing is consistent throughout the Bible when God is referring to the Day of Judgment and that is “darkness.” God says in Isaiah 13:10:
For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
Again, light is not shining. Remember Psalm 80, which we read, states three times that God shined the light of His face or his countenance and we will be saved. But, here, there is no light of any kind that is shining on the earth. It says in Isaiah 47:5:
Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans:…
And that would be another reference to Babylon. God has brought Babylon into “darkness.” Also, it says in Ezekiel 32:7-8:
And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord JEHOVAH.
And it says in Joel 2:1-2:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of JEHOVAH cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
Then it says in Joel 2:10:
The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:
Also, it says in Joel 3:15:
The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.
It says in Amos 5:18:
Woe unto you that desire the day of JEHOVAH! to what end is it for you? the day of JEHOVAH is darkness, and not light.
And in Amos 5:20:
Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?
What would that mean (since God is the light that shines and that shining has to do with salvation)? And what would it mean if the moon, which is the Word of God, went dark and was no longer enlightening the reader and if it no longer had the power to lighten the darkness of the sinner? The sinner lieth in darkness and his heart and mind are in darkness and now when he comes to the Bible, the Bible is now a “dark” Book to the spiritually dead sinner. It will not enlighten him. It will not cause the light of Christ to shine in his heart and he no longer can be enlightened to see the truth of the Word of God. These are awful things and, yet, it is what God is repeatedly telling us, if we follow the methodology He has given us and we look at words and we look up their meaning and we carry that through the Bible.
It says in Zephaniah 1:15:
That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,
It is the Day of Judgment and these verses are numerous in the Old Testament and they are also numerous in the New Testament. In Matthew, chapter 24, we will find there is a consistency from the Old Testament to the New Testament throughout the Bible. It says in 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:
It says something similar in Mark 13:24:
But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
Except, here, God says this is happening over the course of days: “But in those days, after the tribulation,” and that it precisely where we find ourselves now, because the Great Tribulation ended after a full 23 years, on May 21, 2011. We are living “in those days, after that tribulation.” We are living in a time of darkness – thick darkness.
It says in Luke 21:25:
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
God gives us this verse to help us understand that it is not to be literally understood. No – you could not have “days” after the tribulation with a literally darkened sun or the moon literally turned to blood or the stars falling to earth – of course not. These things are types and figures teaching us that there is no more “light” and since God identifies light with salvation, it is teaching us that that there is no more salvation for mankind. The world lieth in “darkness.”
Yes, it was in darkness and then Christ came; the Word of God came into the world. But now this is the end of time and the end of the world. The period of sending forth God’s Word during the day of salvation has come to an end and now we have entered the “night;” it is the night “when no man can work.” We are in the period of “thick darkness,” like the darkness that came upon Egypt, “a darkness which may be felt,” and that darkness had everything to do with the wrath of God that was upon the Egyptians.
Let us also read 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, this is in keeping with the Bible’s overall theme from beginning to end, that Judgment Day will be a day of “darkness.”