The Closing Seals

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 21, 1911

The Closing Seals

WHAT a vision is presented before us in the first four seals, the breaking forth as it were upon the world of four great influences, powers, designed to bring men to God. The first of these is God's victorious Gospel Rider in the pure whiteness of righteousness, winning mighty victories by His truth and love in the hearts yielded to Him; the last three coming as a consequence of rejecting Him, and revealing to the world the awful sinfulness of sin, and its utterly hopeless condition without the Master. Therefore, in sympathy with suffering humanity and a groaning, travailing creation, comes the agonizing cry of God's mighty agencies, the four living creatures, to Christ the Lord to come, to come to His own—that cry four times repeated.

Yet the Master waits. He would that the world—rebellious, refractory, sin-loving humanity—might learn without the trial, the sorrow, the suffering. He loves humanity, all unlovely as it is, with an everlasting love. He demonstrated the wealth of that love by an eternal sacrifice and ignominious death, in which He forever identified Himself with the human race. But He can not be a minister of sin, can not condone sin, can not compromise with sin; He can not immortalize sin. Therefore He died that man might separate from sin. The only way it was possible for man to do that is to break willingly, gladly, voluntarily, with the demon, and arrange himself under Christ, the only Saviour from sin.

If man will not learn by faith the intrinsic evil and power of sin in every form, in whatever guise it may come, God must let him learn by the sad experiences of sin's outworking, not alone among its devotees, but against God—against His government, His children, His whole creation. And all this is represented in the opening of the first four seals. The results of each opening do not cease when the next is opened. The work of the white-horse rider does not cease when the red-horse rider goes forth; each and every one rides on to the end, to the time when the Lord Jesus shall come. There may be times when one or the other is not in evidence, but he is but making preparation for stronger effort.

In the meantime all creation through the living creatures—highest types, by the way, of earth's noblest creations, each in its field, the lion, the ox, the eagle, the man—cries to Him who was and who is and who is to come, to bring to fruition the ages-deferred hope. It will be noticed that the cry to come is not first uttered when the seal is broken. It has been uttered ever since sin entered; and therefore when the vision is opened to the prophet, each is represented as already saying, "Come," just as they had been ceaselessly saying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come."

Our study this week is of the closing seals.

The Answer of the Text

[The answers to the questions are from the American Revised Version. Omitting questions, and disregarding sometimes the capital at the beginning and the period at the close of an answer, the text may be read continuously. In notes and comments both versions are used without designation.]

1. What did John see when the Lamb opened the fifth seal?

And when He opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held.

2. What are these souls represented as saying?

And they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

3. What response was made?

And there was given them to each one a white robe; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little time, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, who should be killed even as they were, should have fulfilled their course.

4. What occurred when the sixth seal was opened?

And I saw when He opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake.

5. What followed the earthquake in order?

And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood.

6. What followed these signs?

And the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig-tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind.

7. What wonderful manifestation next followed?

And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

8. What effect does this have upon humanity?

And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chief captains, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; and they say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of their wrath is come; and who is able to stand?

9. What occurs when the seventh seal is broken?

And when He opened the seventh seal, there followed a silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

Note and Comment

1. Underneath the altar.—Not the altar in heaven, for the altar of incense is the only altar mentioned as in the heavenly temple. Rev. 8:3. The vision pertains to earth. There go forth the horses, there rides Christ in His Gospel, and War, and Famine, and Death. The term "altar" is a symbol of sacrifice, for on the altar of sacrifice the souls who died for their faith bore witness. Souls.—Not disembodied, intangible entities, a conception of which the Bible knows nothing; but persons who died for their faith in a thousand different ways, dead upon or within the earth. "Person" is the primary meaning of the word "soul," and so is used to-day. See 1 Peter 3:20; Gen. 2:7; Joshua 10:28, 30, 32, etc. For the Word of God and the testimony which they held.—For this John was banished to Patmos. Rev. 1:9. For this died the noble witnesses of Christ during the pagan persecutions. For this died the multitudes of the Dark Ages under the fierce persecutions of mistaken Roman Catholics. They cried.—Not literally; for they are dead, and "the dead know not anything. . . . Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished." Eccl. 9:5, 6.

2. How long, O Master, . . . dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood?—If these souls were in happiness in heaven, we could not conceive of their making such request. They would rather thank their murderers for slaying them. Then as Christians, they never would pray for vengeance, for many of them died praying for their persecutors. The meaning of the passage is that eternal justice calls to God in their behalf as truly as tho their voices were so lifted. So parts of a building are represented as crying out against the wickedness and oppression which erected it. Hab. 2:11, 12. So Abel's blood is said to cry out of the ground

against Cain's crime. Gen. 4:10. So the earth and all creation cries to God against its load of sin and evil. Rom. 8:22. The martyrs are sleeping in Jesus, but justice still cries out against their persecutors. And the holy and true Master remembers, tho He seems to wait.

3. Rest yet for a little time.—When these souls died they died as heretics to some human creed, enemies to some abnormal State. Their memory was covered with obloquy and shame. God's judgment is different from man's. They died for Christ and His truth; white robes await them. Nay, more, under the influence of the Reformation and Biblical enlightenment men have come to see that these noble witnesses for truth were enemies to neither the Church nor the State; and impartial history has clothed them in robes of honor Until their fellow servants.—Other persecutions are to follow. They were not all with the Papacy. Protestantism fell into the same error of uniting Church and State, or "establishing" religion by civil law; and wherever and whenever this has been done, it has resulted in persecution, oppression, injustice in some form. Such union has invariably proved a curse to both Church and State. Yet men demand it, and professed Christians are now working for it, demanding it, expecting it; and its success is predicted in the Scriptures as the union of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet. Others may have to seal their faith with their blood; and even more general would be the persecution than the world has ever seen, did not the coming of Christ deliver His people. Let the persecuted rest, dead or alive; God has not forgotten. He remembers every faithful soul.

4. A great earthquake.—The first event in the opening of this seal fixes its date. The great earthquake was none other than that known as the Lisbon earthquake, Nov. 1, 1755, which destroyed that city, then having 30,000 houses, 200,000 inhabitants, 120 churches, and in it "there were more convents than in any other place of the same extent." It was at that time one of the great commercial cities of Europe, and one of the richest. More than a fourth of the people were destroyed, and much of its immense treasure buried. Letter after letter before us, dated from six to seven days after the catastrophe, does not in any wise minimize the awful calamity. In this earthquake, Lisbon was but the center. That mighty temblor reached its mighty fingers far into Africa, covering the continent of Europe, and extending unknown distances at sea. A work before us, written by a "gentleman of the University of Cambridge," and published in 1756, says:

"By the accounts hitherto received, this extraordinary earthquake has continued for the space of two months, and has been felt with more or less violence from the eastern shores of America to the heart of Germany, and from the frozen clime of Iceland to almost the Tropic of Cancer, about 4,000 miles one way, and 2,000 the other; so that considering its duration, extent, and mischievous effects, it seems to be one of the greatest calamities that has befallen the world in almost any age."

Had science possessed at that time its sensitive seismometers in all parts of the world, the mighty quake would have been recorded everywhere. The only things of record in 1775 were shakes so vigorous that the human being himself was very sensible to them.

5. Sun became black.—The remarkable darkening of the sun, May 19, 1780, known as "The Dark Day," came at the very time in the history of the world predicted by our Lord, as recorded in Matt. 24:29; Mark 13:24. The moon was darkened the night following, till one writer says that the darkness was so great "that a sheet of white paper held within a few inches of the eye was equally invisible with the blackest velvet," altho the moon was at that time in the full. This is predicted in the prophecy we are studying by "the whole moon." As blood.—Whenever the moon appeared that night we are told "it had the appearance of blood." It is sometimes said that these things occurred at the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, but the Revelation was written more than a score of years after that event.

6. The Stars.—The meteors, formerly commonly known as shooting stars. The prediction is that of the well-known and often recorded meteoric shower of Nov. 13, 1833. It is said to be periodic, but in all later occurrences it has been a minor affair compared with that of 1833.

7. The heaven was removed.—The atmospheric heaven is referred to. This event is yet future. We live between the falling of the stars and the shaking of the powers of heaven. That shaking will be caused by the voice of God announcing the close of probation. "Jehovah will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but Jehovah will be a refuge unto His people." Joel 3:16. "There came forth a great voice out of the temple, from the throne, saying, It is done: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since there were men upon the earth, so great an earthquake, so mighty. . . . And the cities of the nations fell." Rev. 16:17-19. See Matt. 24:29; Mark 13:25; Luke 21:26; Heb. 12:26, 27.

8. And the kings, etc.—Men who never feared men, will tremble then. Men before whom men bowed will then bow and cry in fear. Men who scorned to pray to God, will pray to insensate rocks to cover them. Bondmen and freemen will all be on the same level then. See Isa. 24:1-5. Hide us.—There is no hiding from God. Men have not seen Him, and thought Him absent, but they have not been hidden from Him. Every deed and motive has been faithfully recorded. If they had admitted God into the heart, they could stand in the light of the glory of His face, before which all sin and all identified with sin shall perish. Wrath of the Lamb.—Not wrath as men know it, but wrath against sin; the infinite justice of the God of love, and of the Lamb who died that our iniquity might be put away. In all the manifestations of God's wrath against sin in the past there has been the intermixture of mercy. The wine has been mixed. Ps. 75:8. But when men have rejected to the uttermost His mercy, He can do no more; justice must do its work. Rev. 14:10. Then will the God of infinite love do "His work, His strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act, . . . a decree of destruction . . . from the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, upon the whole earth." Isa. 28:21, 22. Love to His own demands it. Justice to His own demands it. Love and justice to the incorrigibly wicked demand that sin shall be swept from the earth. Those who have not received God's glory internally will be consumed; but those who have Christ within, will be changed "from glory to glory."

9. A silence in heaven.—A strange thing is silence in heaven in the presence of God when sinless, countless messengers delight to do Him honor, and ceaseless praise ever ascends. How can there be silence there for a half hour, prophetic hour, doubtless, one forty-eighth of a prophetic day (or year), or a little over a week? Silence for a week in heaven! Here is the answer: Jesus declares that when the Son of Man shall come in His glory and the glory of the Father, "all the angels" shall be with Him. Matt. 16:27; 25:31. Heaven will be emptied at that supernal event. It will be grand, glorious privilege for the messengers of God in body of cherubim or seraphim, in company and singly, to escort the Triumphant Lamb when He calls to immortality and glory the sons of God, an event for which the ages have waited; and the Eternal One gives them a week's glad holiday for the event. Through shining galaxies and hosts of suns and shining constellations, shall the armies of God, superior to all matter, escort Him on His way; hear the mighty trump, whose vibrations will wake to life and create anew the holy living and dead; thrill to His glorious voice shout to living and sleeping saints the call of life; see the marshaling of the saints of God of all ages and climes gathered by the shining messengers, as the earth wheels on its course, to meet Him in the air. Then the Master will have answered the fourfold call, Come. And then with dynamic powers which only immortals know, shall the innumerable company of saint and escort angel pursue their swift journey through archways of glory, through celestial avenues of light, to the center of God's universe, the crystal sea, before the throne of the ineffable God. There such songs as the universe never heard shall be sung to Him who is Love's victor forever. But the earth lies desolate. Of that hereafter.