OPENING THE SEALS

Chapter 6 contains a most puzzling set of symbols. Having been handed the scroll, the Lamb opens six of seven seals binding the scrolls. This loosed successively four great horses of different colours, a grave containing the souls of martyred faithful and a great earthquake. Such calamities were not original to John, but were also found in many other apocalyptic writings as well as Mark 13 (cf. Zech.1:7-17; 6:1-8). John modified these symbols for his own purposes.

The four horses represented disasters which the faithful had endured: war, rebellion, famine and pestilence. Historians record that all of these had actually happened during the previous last three or four decades of the 1st century. Christians had suffered through them like all other citizens of the Roman Empire and would continue to suffer for some time to come.

John did not say that these were retribution for the sins of the world. These evils had not been caused by the will of God. They had been tolerated by God’s permission. John used them to declare that the sovereignty of Christ exists even where sin and death are most evident. As in the Cross, human wickedness can be turned to the service of God’s purpose. Nothing can happen which cannot be woven into God’s eternal redemptive purpose.

With the opening of the fifth seal, John saw the souls of many martyrs beneath an altar of heaven. By the end of the 1st century there had been innumerable martyrs executed for proclaiming the gospel to the world. They were given white robes symbolizing immortality and asking them to wait for their final deliverance while martyrdom continued for their brothers and sisters still being persecuted.