The De-Creation of a Kingdom: The Sixth Seal Text: Revelation 6:12-17
Introduction: Learning to Read the Pictures
When modern Christians come to a passage like this one in Revelation, they tend to do one of two things. The first is to treat it like the script for a science fiction disaster movie, a literal, physical end of the space-time continuum. The sun literally goes out, the moon literally turns to blood, and stars, which are massive balls of flaming gas millions of times larger than the earth, somehow fall on it like figs. The second approach is to get embarrassed by the strangeness of it all and treat it as a pious but incomprehensible mess of symbols with no real historical anchor. Both approaches are a profound misreading of how the Bible uses its own dictionary.
The book of Revelation is the most Old Testament-saturated book in the New Testament. John is not inventing a new symbolic language; he is speaking the language of the prophets. He is painting pictures with a vocabulary God had already established in places like Isaiah, Joel, and Ezekiel. When God wanted to describe the fall of a nation, the collapse of a kingdom, or the end of a covenant age, He consistently used this kind of apocalyptic, "de-creation" language. It is the language of political and covenantal collapse, not cosmological explosion.
So when we read about the sun, moon, and stars falling, we should not be thinking about astrophysics. We should be thinking about the collapse of a political heaven, the dissolution of a ruling order. This is God's poetic, inspired, and entirely coherent way of describing the demolition of a world. And the world in view here, as it is throughout most of Revelation, is the world of apostate, first-century Judaism, which had rejected its Messiah and was about to face the covenantal consequences. The sixth seal does not describe the end of the world, but rather the end of their world, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70.
The Text
Then I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man HID THEMSELVES IN THE CAVES and among the rocks of the mountains; and they SAID TO THE MOUNTAINS AND TO THE ROCKS, “FALL ON US AND HIDE US from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great DAY OF their WRATH has come, and who is able to stand?”
(Revelation 6:12-17 LSB)
The World Comes Apart (vv. 12-14)
The opening of the sixth seal unleashes a torrent of cosmic upheaval, every bit of it drawn from the Old Testament prophetic playbook.
"Then I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places." (Revelation 6:12-14)
First, there is a "great earthquake." In prophetic language, earthquakes signify massive political and social shaking. God says through Haggai, "I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations" (Hag. 2:21-22). This is not seismology; it is the violent overthrow of established powers. The world of the first-century Jews, with its Temple, its priesthood, and its political arrangements with Rome, was about to be shaken to its foundations and utterly overthrown.
Next, the celestial bodies are struck. The sun goes dark, the moon turns to blood, and the stars fall. Jesus predicted this exact language would apply to the generation that rejected Him (Matt. 24:29), and He was quoting the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 13, the prophet uses this very imagery, the sun and moon darkened and the stars not giving their light, to describe the impending fall of Babylon (Isa. 13:10). In Isaiah 34, similar language describes the judgment of Edom. In Ezekiel 32, it describes the fall of Egypt. Never once does this language describe the end of the physical cosmos. It always describes the end of a national or political cosmos.
The sun, moon, and stars represent the ruling structures of a nation. The sun is the supreme authority, the king or emperor. The moon reflects that authority, representing lesser governors and nobles. The stars are the wider host of magistrates, priests, and influential leaders. For all of them to be darkened, bloodied, and cast down is to say that the entire ruling structure is collapsing into chaos and death. The glory of the Herodian dynasty, the authority of the Sanhedrin, the influence of the chief priests, all of it was about to be extinguished in the bloody chaos of the Jewish War.
The sky rolling up like a scroll is the removal of the very canopy of their covenant world. The "heavens and earth" in Scripture often refer to a covenantal order. The old covenant made at Sinai was a heaven and earth. With the coming of Christ, that old order was growing obsolete and ready to vanish away (Heb. 8:13). Here we see it happening. The old covenant world is being rolled up and put away. And with it, "every mountain and island were moved out of their places." Mountains and islands are biblical symbols of stable kingdoms and governments. In this judgment, nothing is stable. No kingdom, no ruler, no institution is left secure. The entire geopolitical landscape of Judea was being violently rearranged.
No Place to Hide (vv. 15-16)
The result of this covenantal de-creation is universal terror among those who have rejected the Son.
"Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man HID THEMSELVES IN THE CAVES and among the rocks of the mountains; and they SAID TO THE MOUNTAINS AND TO THE ROCKS, 'FALL ON US AND HIDE US from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.'" (Revelation 6:15-16)
John gives us a comprehensive list of humanity, from the top to the bottom of the social ladder. Kings, great men, commanders, the rich, the strong, slave, and free. This is not to say every last person on planet earth was hiding in a cave. This is a way of saying that no one, regardless of rank or status, could escape the terror of this judgment. The judgment on Jerusalem was total, affecting every level of society.
And what is their response? It is not repentance. It is a desperate, futile attempt to hide. They run to the caves and rocks, a detail that the historian Josephus records literally happened during the siege of Jerusalem, as men sought refuge in the caves and catacombs around the city. Their cry, "Fall on us and hide us," is a direct quote from the prophet Hosea, describing the terror of Israel's judgment (Hosea 10:8). And Jesus Himself turned to the women of Jerusalem on His way to the cross and said, "the days are coming when they will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us'" (Luke 23:30). This is the fulfillment of that prophecy.
Notice what they are afraid of. They want to be hidden from two things: "the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." This is the central terror. It is not the Roman armies they are ultimately afraid of; it is the face of God the Father and the wrath of Jesus Christ, the Lamb they slaughtered. They would rather be crushed by a literal mountain than face the gaze of the one they rejected. This reveals the heart of unbelief. The unregenerate man does not want a Savior; he wants a place to hide from that Savior. The ultimate terror for the wicked is not annihilation, but the inescapable presence of the holy God they have spent their lives ignoring.
The Unanswerable Question (v. 17)
The chapter concludes with the terrified cry of those under judgment.
"for the great DAY OF their WRATH has come, and who is able to stand?" (Revelation 6:17)
They recognize that this is not just another war. This is the "great day of their wrath." The phrase "day of the Lord" throughout the Old Testament refers to a time of decisive, historical judgment against a particular people. This is the great day of the Lord's wrath against covenant-breaking Israel. This is the final answer to the martyrs' cry in the previous seal, "How long, O Lord?" (Rev. 6:10). The answer is, "No longer." The time has come.
And they ask the ultimate question: "who is able to stand?" This question hangs in the air at the end of the chapter, and it is a rhetorical question from their perspective. The implied answer is "no one." In their own strength, faced with the wrath of God and the Lamb, no one can stand. The prophet Nahum asks the same thing: "Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?" (Nahum 1:6). Malachi asks it concerning Christ's coming: "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears?" (Mal. 3:2).
From the perspective of the terrified unbeliever, the question is unanswerable. But the very structure of Revelation provides the answer immediately. The very next chapter, Revelation 7, is a direct answer to this question. Who is able to stand? The 144,000 who are sealed from every tribe of Israel, and the great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They are able to stand. Not because of their own strength, but because they are sealed by God and cleansed by the very Lamb whose wrath is being poured out on the world.
Conclusion: Wrath and Refuge
So what does this ancient political judgment have to do with us? Everything. The principle is eternal. The same Lamb whose wrath was poured out on first-century Jerusalem is the Lamb who sits on the throne today. And there are only two possible responses to Him.
You can reject Him, ignore Him, and live as though He is not Lord. If you do, you remain outside of His grace, and one day you will face His wrath. It may not be in a historical judgment like A.D. 70, but it will be at the final judgment. And on that day, you too will want to hide. You will want the mountains to fall on you, because the terror of a guilty conscience before a holy God is the greatest terror imaginable. The wrath of the Lamb is a terrifying reality because He is the Lamb. The wrath of a gentle, loving, sacrificed Savior is the most dreadful thing in the universe for those who have spurned that love.
Or, you can flee to Him for refuge. The answer to the question "who is able to stand?" is found in the next chapter. It is those who are marked by God, those who have taken refuge in the shed blood of the Lamb. The wrath they deserved was poured out on Him at the cross. Therefore, when the day of wrath comes, they are the only ones who can stand, clothed not in their own righteousness, but in His. The same Lamb who is a terror to His enemies is a refuge for His people. The choice before every one of us is therefore simple. Will you hide from the Lamb, or will you hide in the Lamb?