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?”
The sixth seal introduces the judgment day, and pictures it in horrific symbolism, with the disintegration of the universe and the terrorisation of mankind. The imagery is drawn very extensively from the Old Testament (an interesting comment on the unity of thought between the two Testaments) - see, in order, Ezekiel 38:19; Joel 2:31; Isaiah 34:4; Isaiah 2:10; Hosea 10:8; Joel 2:11. This tremendous cataclysm cannot belong merely to the period of tribulation that is to afflict the people of God in the end-time. Obviously 17 must refer to the Day of Judgment. We may surely link John's words here with our Lord's in Matthew 24:27ff. What happens here comes after the tribulation and as a climax to it, in God's final judgment upon human wickedness. Some have seen a significance in the fact that there are six objects enu merated in this vision, and six classes of men. This, coming under the sixth seal, is linked with the reference in Revelation 13:18 to the number of the beast, six hundred and sixty-six, being the number of man. The inference is that what we have here is the judgment of man as such for his tragic failure to measure up to the divine requirement, and the victory of God over the greatest and proudest pretensions of sinful man under the dominating influence of Satan. Be this as it may, it is certainly clear that the judgment involves all classes of men, from the high est to the lowest, and all creation with them. This last is a prominent emphasis in other parts of Scripture also, and we shall do well to spend another day thinking about it in some detail.