The Weekly Perspective
by Burke Shade, Associate Pastor
In the sixth seal of Revelation 6, there are several “cosmic” events that modern Christians have often used mistakenly to get more zing and sensationalism out of the passage, which helps to sell books about the end times or the Antichrist, etc. These writers think these events are future “end times” because they happen on the earth (instead of on the land of Israel before 70 AD). But are they interpreting these events biblically, comparing scripture with scripture? No, they aren’t.
The sun becoming black as sackcloth, the full moon becoming like blood, the stars of the sky falling to the land like figs being shaken off the tree, the sky being rolled up like a scroll, are well-attested symbols of the fall of political/national structures in the scriptures, symbols that demonstrate God’s judgmental wrath against those political/national entities. In fact, all four of the above mentioned cosmic symbols are attested in just four verses in Isaiah: 13:1, 10 and 34:1, 4.
Isaiah 13:1, 10: “The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw…For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.”
Isaiah 34:1, 4: “Draw near, O nations, to hear, and give attention, O peoples!…all the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll, all their host shall fall from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree.”
See also Ezekiel 32:7 regarding Egypt, and Joel 2:31 against Israel. And also see Matt 24:29, Mark 13:24-25, and Luke 21:25 where Jesus predicts what is happening in Revelation 6!