What Does Revelation 6:12 Mean?

(12-17) **The sixth seal.**—The seals follow the lines laid down by our Lord in Matthew 24. There He tells His disciples that wars (Revelation 6:6), famines and pestilences (Revelation 6:7), and persecutions (Revelation 6:9) are to be expected; these are necessary features in the history of the world. But these features are described by our Master as preliminary to His Coming and the end of the world (Matthew 24:3), and that when these had wrought their work then the Coming of the Son of Man would take place (Matthew 24:29-31). With this guide, it is impossible for us to deny that the opening of this sixth seal has reference to the Coming of the Son of Man, and finds its final and ultimate fulfilment in the day when He will come to gather His elect from the four winds. But it is not to be forgotten that our Lord wished us to regard certain great culminating epochs as in a secondary sense His advents. The eagles which swept down upon the carcase of any corrupt nationality were proofs of His reign and true shadows of His coming. The features indicated in the seals have a sequence which has been reproduced in the history of nations and churches. The promise of good; the breaking forth of the spirit of violence; the time of social misery, want, disease; the oppression of the good; revolution— these have repeated themselves in Jewish, Roman, French, and other histories; and the prophecy is not exhausted yet. (*12-14*)* **And I beheld . . .**—Better, And I saw when He opened the sixth seal, and (omit “lo!”) a great shaking took place, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon all became as blood, and the stars of the heaven fell to the earth, as a fig-tree casts its winter figs when shaken by a great wind, and the heaven departed like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. *It is well to keep in mind the parallel imagery of the Old Testament. The shaking (“earthquake” is hardly an adequate rendering, as the shaking extends to heaven as well as earth) was spoken of by Haggai: “Yet once for all” (not “once more,” as in the English version) “shake I not the earth only, but also the heavens. And this word ‘Once for all’ signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken” (Haggai 2:6, and Hebrews 12:26-27). Sun black as sackcloth: Joel has a similar thought —“the sun shall be turned into darkness” (Joel 2:30-31); and Isaiah,‘‘ I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering” (Isaiah 1:3). The moon as blood is repeated from Joel 2:30-31. The falling of the stars of heaven has its parallel in Isaiah 34:3-4, “All the host of heaven shall be dissolved.” As a fig-tree is an echo of Isaiah 34:4. It will be seen by these passages how closely the writer of the Apocalypse has kept to Old Testament imagery; and that events, such as great calamities, changes, and revolutions in the world’s history, are described by emblems similar to those used here. St. Peter, for example, illustrates the great spiritual revolution of the Day of Pentecost by the passage from Joel, “The sun turned into darkness and the moon into blood.” Hence it seems right to regard the language here as figurative, and to bear in mind that, though its fullest application belongs to the final advent, there may be many anticipatory advents. The judgment is often rehearsed before the day of judgment; the ages of oppression end in a day of catastrophe and confusion in which the righteous laws of a righteous King avenge themselves on the law breakers; the old lights and landmarks are for a time obliterated, and feeble, but pretentious, religionists are swept off as autumn figs from the fig-tree, and the proud and mighty are dismayed; things come to a crisis, and men “are proven by the hour” of that judgment; the unripe or untimely fruit drops off, as those who have no root in themselves fall away, and as the feebly- founded house fell in the tempest (Matthew 7:26-27). If this be so in the minor and preliminary crisis of the world, how much more so in the final crisis, which will try all? “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” The untimely figs, or unripe figs, are the grosses, or winter figs, which grow under the leaves, and do not ripen at the proper season, but hang upon the trees till the winter. They are a fit emblem of those who have not used the opportunity and season to ripen for God. Like the unwise virgins, they have not replenished their lamps with oil; or, to use the unique expression of St. Luke, they bring no fruit to perfection (Luke 8:14). The crisis thus puts the feeble, timid, and negligent to the test, and also proves the vanity of those who make any world-power their confidence. As the day of the Lord of which Isaiah spoke was upon every one that was proud and lifted up, upon the cedars and oaks, upon the towers and fenced walls, upon the loftiness and haughtiness of men, so does the Apocalyptic seer behold the dismay which falls upon every form of vain gloriousness, pretence, and pride.