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Who Shall Be Able to Stand?
Revelation 6:1–17 · Matt Miller · Balkan Baptist Church, Novi Sad
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The light on the dashboard
It starts with a small orange light on the dashboard. You notice it on the way to work, and you tell yourself you will deal with it next week.
A few days later the brakes begin to squeal at every red light. The oil-change sticker in the corner of the windshield quietly goes out of date. Every warning gets the same answer: next week. There is always something more urgent.
Then one cold morning you turn the key. The engine runs for a few seconds, coughs, and goes silent. It has seized, and no amount of turning the key will bring it back.
The warnings were never the problem. The warnings were the mercy.
“For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”
— Revelation 6:17
Revelation 6 is that morning for the whole world. For thousands of years God has warned people: through creation, through conscience, through His Word and through His preachers. When the first seal is broken, the time of warning gives way to the time of judgment. Jesus called it “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8).
But here is the good news hidden in this hard chapter: we are reading it before it happens. The light is still on the dashboard. That is why Revelation opens with a blessing on everyone who reads, hears and keeps what is written in it (Revelation 1:3).
The question underneath it all
Most people come to Revelation 6 asking, “When will all this happen?” The chapter ends with a different question, and it is the only one that really matters: “Who shall be able to stand?”
That is not a question about the future. It is a question about where you are standing today.
Who is holding the book
Last week, in Revelation 5, John stood in the throne room of heaven and saw a book in the right hand of God, sealed with seven seals. No one in heaven or on earth was worthy to open it, and John wept. Then a Lamb came, “as it had been slain,” and took the book (Revelation 5:6–7).
Hold on to that picture. The hands that break these seals are the hands that were nailed to the cross. Whatever happens in this chapter, it does not happen behind Jesus' back. It begins in His hands.
Chapter 6 shows the first six seals. Chapter 7 pauses to show people God has sealed and saved, and the seventh seal waits until chapter 8, where it opens into the seven trumpets.
Where does Revelation 6 fit?
Daniel spoke of a final “one week” of seven years (Daniel 9:27). In the middle of it comes what Jesus called “the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Matthew 24:15), followed by “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21).
We believe the church is caught up to meet the Lord before those seven years begin (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17; 5:9; Revelation 3:10). The seals of Revelation 6 open the first half, the part Jesus called “the beginning of sorrows.”
Four riders, one Master
“And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals.” Then one of the four beasts around the throne calls out with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” Four times it happens, and four horses ride out.
Before we look at them, notice one small word that keeps coming back: given. A crown was given. Power was given to take peace. Power was given over the fourth part of the earth. These riders do not seize anything. Everything they have is handed to them, and only as much as God allows.
Nothing in Revelation 6 is out of control. Every rider comes only when called.
A rider with a borrowed crown
“And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer” (6:2).
Paul tells us that “that man of sin” will be “revealed” in his time, once what holds him back is taken out of the way (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 6–8). It may well be that this first seal is that revealing: a man who comes promising peace and wins the world without a shot fired. Daniel says he will “confirm the covenant with many for one week” (Daniel 9:27).
Scripture does not name the rider, so we hold that as a likely possibility, not a certainty. What the text does say plainly is that his crown was given. Even the most powerful man on earth rides only when the Lamb allows.
Red, black and pale
Whatever peace the first rider promised does not last. Three more horses follow him:
The red horse: power is given “to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another.” War follows the false peace.
The black horse: the rider carries a pair of balances, and a voice cries, “A measure of wheat for a penny.” A whole day's work buys bread for one person. Ezekiel warned of a day when men would “eat bread by weight, and with care” (Ezekiel 4:16).
The pale horse: its rider's name is Death, “and Hell followed with him.” Power is given over the fourth part of the earth by sword, hunger, death and the beasts of the earth, the same “four sore judgments” Ezekiel spoke of (Ezekiel 14:21).
Why horses?
John was not the first prophet to see horses like these. Zechariah saw red, black, white and grisled horses, and the angel told him, “These are they whom the LORD hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth” (Zechariah 1:10). Later he called them “the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth” (Zechariah 6:5).
The picture is the same in both books. These are not wild forces loose in the world. They stand before the Lord, and they go only where He sends them.
What did “a penny” buy?
The penny was a Roman denarius, a full day's wage for a working man (Matthew 20:2). The “measure” of wheat was roughly a litre, about enough to feed one person for one day. Barley, the cheaper grain, stretched a little further.
In other words, a man could work all day and barely feed himself, never mind his family. That is famine.
Just as Jesus said
None of this should surprise us. Sitting on the Mount of Olives, Jesus described the same things in almost the same order: false Christs, wars and rumours of wars, famines, pestilences, and believers put to death (Matthew 24:4–9). Then He added, “for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.”
Every generation has been promised peace by men. Treaties are signed, leaders make speeches, and for a while it seems to work. But when God is pushed out, peace does not stay.
The world's peace without the Prince of Peace will never last.
PAUSE AND REFLECT Where have I been looking for a peace that does not come from Christ? |
The prayers under the altar
The first four seals show us the earth. The fifth lifts our eyes to heaven. John sees “under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held” (6:9). That is the very reason John himself was on the island of Patmos (1:9).
Why under the altar? At the altar of sacrifice, the blood was poured out at its base (Leviticus 4:7). These believers poured out their lives as an offering to God. Paul used the same picture of himself near the end of his life: “For I am now ready to be offered” (2 Timothy 4:6).
“How long, O Lord?”
They cry with a loud voice, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (6:10).
This is not bitterness. It is the same cry we hear in the Psalms and the prophets: “How long, LORD?” (Psalm 79:5; Zechariah 1:12). It is the prayer of people who know God is holy and true, asking Him to do what He has promised and set the world right.
Three answers from heaven
God does not ignore them. He answers in three ways:
He clothes them. “White robes were given unto every one of them.” The world called them guilty. Heaven calls them clean.
He comforts them. They are told to “rest yet for a little season.” Their waiting is not wasted, and it is not long.
He counts them. God knows the full number of those who will be faithful unto death. Nothing about His people is forgotten, and nothing is random.
Heaven may say “wait a little,” but heaven never says “I did not hear.”
When heaven seems silent
Maybe you have done right and suffered for it. Maybe you have prayed for years for a husband, a child or a friend, and heard nothing back. Remember the “golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints” held before the throne (5:8). God keeps every prayer. Remember too our brothers and sisters around the world who suffer for Christ today. They are not forgotten either.
PAUSE AND REFLECT Is there a prayer you have stopped praying because heaven seemed silent? |
The day the sky rolls up
Then the sixth seal is opened, and the whole universe seems to shake. There is a great earthquake. The sun becomes “black as sackcloth of hair,” the moon “as blood.” The stars fall like unripe figs shaken loose by a mighty wind, and the heaven departs “as a scroll when it is rolled together” (6:12–14).
Every one of these pictures comes from the prophets. Isaiah saw the heavens “rolled together as a scroll” (Isaiah 34:4). Joel saw the sun darkened and the moon turned to blood “before the great and the terrible day of the LORD” (Joel 2:31). Jesus spoke of the same signs (Matthew 24:29). What looks most solid and permanent, the very sky above us, is shaken like a tree in the wind.
From the palace to the field
Then John lists seven kinds of people: kings, great men, rich men, chief captains, mighty men, every bondman and every free man. From the palace to the field, no one is left out.
No title can protect them. No bank account can protect them. No army can protect them. And they all do exactly the same thing. They run for the dens and the rocks of the mountains, just as Isaiah said men would go “into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 2:19).
“And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”
— Revelation 6:16–17
Calling to the rocks
Notice what they do not do. They are terrified, but they do not repent. They call to the rocks, not to the Lord. Fear is not the same as faith. A person can be afraid of judgment and still refuse the Judge.
And notice the phrase “the wrath of the Lamb.” We do not usually put those words together. A lamb is gentle. But this is the Lamb who was slain for sinners, the One who offered Himself as their shelter. The One they cannot face is the very One who once died to save them.
A Rock to hide in
Ever since Adam hid among the trees of the garden (Genesis 3:8), people have tried to hide from God: behind busyness, excuses, noise and even religion. But the Bible tells of another kind of rock.
When Moses asked to see God's glory, the Lord said, “I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by” (Exodus 33:22). Moses was not hiding from God. He was hidden by God. And Paul tells us who that Rock is: “that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).
That is what Christ is for everyone who trusts Him. “Thou art my hiding place” (Psalm 32:7). “Your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The only ones who stand are the ones hidden in the Lamb, and the only time the Bible promises is now: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
You can hide from the Lamb, or you can hide in the Lamb. There is no third place.
PAUSE AND REFLECT What have I been hiding behind, instead of hiding in Christ? |
Bringing it home
Back to the dashboard
Think again about that car. The light, the brakes and the oil were never the problem. They were mercy. Every one of them was saying, “There is still time.”
That is where we are today. The book is in the Lamb's hand, but the seals have not been broken. The riders have not been sent. The sky has not been rolled up. The light is still on the dashboard.
When the door was shut
Jesus said, “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24:37). For years Noah built and preached. People ate, drank and married, and “knew not until the flood came, and took them all away.” Then Noah went into the ark, “and the LORD shut him in” (Genesis 7:16). The door God shut, no one could open.
Notice who was outside that door. Not people who had never heard, but people who had listened to Noah, “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), for years and kept saying “not yet.” Paul warns of the same thing at the end: those who “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” will be given over to “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:10–11). If you have heard the gospel and keep putting it off, the Bible does not promise you a second chance after the church is gone.
If you have never come inside
“All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The wrath of the Lamb is real, and it is just. But the same Lamb was slain for you. “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and… he was buried, and… he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). He took the wrath we deserved so that we could be hidden in Him.
You cannot earn this by good behaviour, church attendance or trying harder. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works” (Ephesians 2:8–9). We come by repentance and faith: turning from our sin and trusting Christ alone to save us.
“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). He has promised, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). The door is still open. Do not wait for the light to go dark.
If you are already inside
This chapter is not meant to frighten you. “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Paul told believers to “comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).
But it should wake you up. Live ready. Stay faithful when it costs you something. And remember that the people around you, at work, at school and at home, are still outside the ark.
Someone who keeps saying “next week”
Think of one person who has heard the gospel and keeps putting it off. Pray for them by name every day this week. Then, before Sunday, have one honest conversation with them. You might simply ask, “If the door were shut today, are you sure you would be inside?”
CARRY THIS WITH YOU The warnings are mercy. The Lamb holds the book. And there is only one safe place to stand: hidden in Him. |
A prayer you can pray
Words do not save anyone; Christ does. But if you are ready to turn from your sin and trust Him, you can tell Him so right where you are, something like this:
“Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I have been putting You off for too long. I believe You died for my sins and rose again. I turn from my sin, and I trust You alone to save me. Hide me in You. Thank You that the door is still open. Amen.”
If you prayed that and meant it, we would love to hear from you. You can reach us with the buttons below.
Questions you might have
Is Revelation 6 happening right now?
No. The seals follow the moment the church is caught up to meet the Lord. Wars, famines and disasters in our day are not the seals being opened. Jesus said of such things, “the end is not yet” (Matthew 24:6).
We are not told the day or the hour, so we do not set dates. We are told to be ready: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 24:44).
Is the rider on the white horse the Antichrist?
Possibly. Paul says the man of sin will be “revealed” in his time (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 6–8), and many believe the first seal is that revealing: a ruler who conquers by promising peace. The text itself does not name him, so we hold it as a likely interpretation, not a certainty. What is certain is that his crown was given to him. He rides only when the Lamb allows.
Will Christians go through these judgments?
We believe not. Paul calls Jesus the One “which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), and says “God hath not appointed us to wrath” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). The Lord promised the church at Philadelphia, “I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world” (Revelation 3:10). We believe the church is caught up before the seals are opened.
Who will be caught up?
Everyone who is truly saved. “The dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). The line is drawn at being in Christ, not at being on a church membership roll.
Paul says “we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52). Not some of the saved. All of them.
That is because salvation is by grace through faith, not by works: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Titus 3:5; see also Ephesians 2:8–9). Baptism and church membership matter; they are how a saved person obeys Christ. But they are not what saves. The thief on the cross was never baptized and never joined a church, yet Jesus told him, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
So the people left behind will not be saved people who missed a requirement. They will be people who were never saved at all.
Who are the souls under the altar?
They are believers who were slain “for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held” (6:9). God tells them that more of their “fellowservants also and their brethren” would be killed “as they were” (6:11).
Revelation does not tell us how many there will be, and it never presents those days as a second chance. What it shows is the price they paid, and that God hears them, clothes them and remembers every one.
What is “the wrath of the Lamb”?
It is the righteous judgment of Jesus Christ on sin. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). The One who will judge is the same One who died for sinners, and everyone who trusts Him is rescued from that wrath: “being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:9).
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ABOUT THIS MESSAGE This message is part of our Revelation series, preached on Sunday evenings at 6:30 pm at Balkan Baptist Church, Ćirila i Metodija 42a, Novi Sad. You are welcome to join us. |
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