Revelation 6:15 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Revelation 6:15

Comments

Six classes of person are named as coming under judgement. Kings – those with absolute earthly power; and great men – who strove and manoeuvred all their lives for position of security; and rich men – who rely on their wealth and find it completely useless in this hour of calamity; chief captains – the people who operate through their skills, but this is completely beyond their skills to remedy; mighty men – including intellectuals and those with great business operations; and bond men – the lower classes of that day for none are exempt. Six features of despair! There is no favouritism here towards rich or poor, great or small. What is the significance of earthly distinctions once this day comes? All who rejected God will be in the same condition, and none of their earthly achievements will help them.‘Hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains.’ Isaiah used the same terrifying language (Isaiah 2:10). An extraordinary scene is now witnessed by John. How can we explain it? Here are men and women from all classes of society making a choice that no human beings have ever collectively made, and few even individually in all the history of the world. What a form of death they chose for themselves. It is a form of death that rational men and women have striven at all costs to avoid. The terror that accompanies an earthquake and the steps that people take afterwards out of fear of further aftershocks testifies to this. Often people will not sleep indoors but only out in the open for fear they will be buried under buildings. Yet on the day of judgment men and women will positively seek destruction in this way. It is a picture which conveys the extreme terror that will be experienced. Men have committed suicide before; they have even done so in large groups, but never have they sought such a terrible form of death. Yet now the people are seen praying to the inanimate world in desperation as if it could answer them. Yet God will frustrate even this last prayer because he has something worse in store for them even than death. Do they ask for life? No, they ask for death. They prefer to suffer physical death if it will allow them to escape the judgement of God. ‘Hide us’, they cry – they hope for annihilation – ‘from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.’ He would have been their Saviour, but now he is the greatest possible source of terror to them.

Application

The slave is here also and the freeman. It is a complete misrepresentation of the gospel to teach that Christ somehow favours the poor just because they are poor; that poverty makes a man fit for the kingdom of heaven. Far from it, the poorest of all are also found here, slaves who have spent their lives serving others. Don’t they get any compensation in the world to come for all they have endured in this world? Not while salvation is by grace. These slaves have never sought the Lord and they are as godless as their ungodly masters. They too will be judged for their sins just as the freemen who are their masters.

That day, which has been so long promised in order to warn the inhabitants of the earth, has come. Why did they not believe that it would eventually come? Why did they mock at it saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming?’ (2 Peter 3:4). That day has been so long delayed in order to give men the maximum opportunity to repent. Did he not earnestly warn them: ‘But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God?’ (Romans 2:5). Did they think that somehow they would be able to withstand the Lord? Did they think that they would be able to argue with him to his face? Some apparently think so, for they boast of their intention of holding God accountable for all the unfair things they have had to suffer in life. They think to justify themselves in the presence of God, and prove him to be at fault. These verses describe what will really happen when men are brought face to face with the Lord in that day. All their bravado will forsake them. They will stand naked with not a shred of righteousness to cover them. Why then do men not project themselves into the future to see that day as it will really be before it comes? God has given human beings the gift of imagination. Why do they not use it?

Questions

This brings us to the close of the sixth seal which marks the end of the world. This is the first of a number of points throughout the book when we find that we have arrived at the day of judgment, and yet the book has not finished. At this point we are not even half way through. The next chapter will see men and women back on earth again and life continuing. The explanation is the cyclic nature of the book. It contains seven different spans of the entire gospel age and after each one it returns to the start of age again. We come here to the end of one such span.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Revelation 6:15 Commentary and Bible Study