Revelation 6:12-17

(12-17) The sixth seal. — The seals follow the lines laid down by our Lord in Matthew 24. There He tells His disciples that wars (Revelation 6:6), famines and pestilences (Revelation 6:7), and persecutions (Revelation 6:9) are to be expected; these are necessary features in the history of the world. But these features are described by our Master as preliminary to His Coming and the end of the world (Matthew 24:3), and that when these had wrought their work then the Coming of the Son of Man would take place (Matthew 24:29). With this guide, it is impossible for us to deny that the opening of this sixth seal has reference to the Coming of the Son of Man, and finds its final and ultimate fulfilment in the day when He will come to gather His elect from the four winds. But it is not to be forgotten that our Lord wished us to regard certain great culminating epochs as in a secondary sense His advents. The eagles which swept down upon the carcase of any corrupt nationality were proofs of His reign and true shadows of His coming. The features indicated in the seals have a sequence which has been reproduced in the history of nations and churches. The promise of good; the breaking forth of the spirit of violence; the time of social misery, want, disease; the oppression of the good; revolution — these have repeated themselves in Jewish, Roman, French, and other histories; and the prophecy is not exhausted yet.