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 reference to cosmic changes and convulsions should in itself convince us that what is envisaged here is the last or final judgment. When it comes to stars falling to the earth, it is surely the last of the earth! Prophets and apostles alike associate the final judgment with dis turbance and upheaval in the natural order. The passage in 2 Peter 3:10ff is a good parallel to John's words here. Nor should this surprise us, for in the Book of Genesis, the fall of man through sin is said to affect creation also (3:17), and Paul takes up the thought in Romans 8:20ff and speaks of all creation in the bondage of corruption. Since this is so, it is clear that with the final eruption of sin in the last days (cf 2 Timothy 3:13, 'evil man ... shall wax worse and worse') the natural order would be likely to show signs of disturbance. This partly ex plains the 'signs' which John and other biblical writers - and indeed Christ Himself - mention as being associated with the end-time. But more, just as the final judgment ushers in the kingdom of God, and thus may be regarded as the birth-pangs of the new order, so also, on the cosmic scale, the death-throes of the old creation become the birth-pangs of the new, when it is 'delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God' (Romans 8:21). It has been left to our day to see that the idea of cosmic upheaval be longs not to the realm of fantastic dream but to cold, sober reality. The arrogant pretensions of man in the nuclear age have brought this vision within the dreadful possibility of fulfilment.