Lesson 18: The Seven Seals, part 3

Revelation 6:9-17
9 When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.
10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
12 When He opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood,
13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
14 The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
15 Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains,
16 calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb,
17 for the great day of Their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

In these two seals we see a scene in Heaven as the souls of believers who have died in the previous four seals are crying to God for justice. These believers are not part of the Church; they are people who have accepted Jesus as their Savior after the Rapture of the Church – which we saw pictured in Revelation 4 in a previous lesson.


The sixth seal brings a tremendous earthquake. Jesus told His disciples and us, before He died for us, that certain specific things would happen before He physically returned to earth – and increased earthquakes were part of that – Matthew 24. As we pay attention to these things Jesus told us, we can clearly see how close these end-times truly are today.

The warnings we see in these verses with the terrible wrath of God’s righteousness unleashed as He reclaims what is rightfully His as Creator are a reminder to us that we must heed Jesus’ predictions. He said that He told us these things ahead of time so we would believe Him. Believing means we are more focused on His kingdom than we are with our earthly lives.

*What is Jesus asking you to do to tell others about His soon return to call us to His side before all these things begin to happen?