Well, again this morning we have the really amazing privilege of going to the book of Revelation, so you can open to chapter 6. There are so many details laid out in Scripture. As we go through the book of Revelation, it’s hard for me, honestly, to leave anything out. I have a hard time doing that in any passage, but it’s really a challenge in the book of Revelation, and I’ll do my best to open up the portion that is before us in particular and show how it relates to the rest of Scripture as well. But just to refresh your mind, let’s go back to the beginning of chapter 6, and let me read the opening eleven verses, framing up our look at verses 9 to 11.

“Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, ‘Come.’ I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

“When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, ‘Come.’ And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.

“When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, ‘Come.’ I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.’

“When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come.’ I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.

“When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ There was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.”

Just a reminder, the book of Revelation divides into three segments. The first three chapters deal with the church on earth, Christ moving in His church, letters to the churches. Chapters 4 and 5 then deal with the scene in heaven. After the church, represented by the twenty-four elders, is raptured, taken up into heaven, and is gathered around the throne of God, praising and honoring the Father and the Lamb. So you have the church in heaven in 4 and 5. Then you come back to earth for the next segment, which runs all the way till chapter 19, when Christ returns.

So we are entered into chapters 6 through, let’s say, 18, and it’s all basically judgment, with some explanations along the way that are critical. And that judgment unfolds in seven seals; and out of the seventh seal, seven trumpets; and out of the seventh trumpet, seven bowl judgments. That’s the string of judgments. And then mingled into those chapters there are explanatory chapters that are very important for us to understand.

What you have in chapters 6 through 18, until the return of Christ, is the layout of the future of God’s final vengeance. You will notice the word “avenging” in verse 10. These are cries for divine vengeance from saints under the altar. What is that? Where is that scene? Well, this is a vision that John has of heaven. These are saints with the Lord, as it were, in His sanctuary in heaven, in the location where prayers would be offered. That’s what incense symbolized in the Old Testament, with the tabernacle and the Temple. There was an altar of incense which symbolized the prayers of the people.

So John in this vision looks into the sanctuary of God, and he sees these saints who are praying for God’s vengeance to come on the earth. They are saints who are martyred. They are in heaven because they want God to avenge their blood on those who dwell on the earth. They want God to come back and render judgment on those responsible for martyring them. They don’t gain anything personally from that; they’re already in heaven. But they want an end to iniquity. They want an end to persecution. They want an end to unrighteousness. They want righteousness, holiness, to prevail. This is the fifth seal: praying martyrs, praying for vengeance.

That is a subject that you will rarely hear spoken of in a church, any church: God’s vengeance. A lot of people in a hurry to speak about His love and His goodness and His mercy and His grace, and well we should. But the Bible says a lot about God’s vengeance. In fact, in Deuteronomy 32:35, He Himself says, “Vengeance is Mine, and retribution.” Twice more in Deuteronomy 32, He says, “I will render vengeance on My adversaries.”

The psalmist, affirming that truth about God in Psalm 94, said this: “O Lord, God of vengeance, God of vengeance, shine forth! Rise up, O Judge of the earth, render recompense to the proud.” So you have, even with the psalmist, a similar attitude that you have with the martyrs under the altar in the vision of John in Revelation 6. The saints long for an end to unrighteousness, unholiness, sin, transgression, hostility toward God, dishonor of Christ, and persecution of the people of God. That same Psalm, 94, it says, “The Lord our God will destroy them.”

It’s amazing to me, and it must be to you, how much hubris this culture we live in has, to think that they’re in control of the end of the earth, that something they do or don’t do is going to decide the divine timetable for this temporary planet—when it’s all prewritten history, and God will be the one who will bring about His vengeance, and with it massive judgment and destruction.

It’s not unusual for the saints to pray for God to be vindicated, for God to be honored, for sin to be destroyed, righteousness to prevail. You find what are called “imprecatory psalms,” where people are calling on God to destroy the wicked to vindicate His name, like Psalm 35, or Psalm 69, or Psalm 109. We won’t take the time to look at those, but Psalm 79:10 says, “Let there be known among the nations in our sight, vengeance for the blood of Your servants which has been shed.” In particular, vengeance is called for on the ungodly world that persecutes the people of God.

There is, then, connected with the reality of that divine vengeance, a certain amount of joy and satisfaction. In Psalm 64—and again, there are many places where we could look and see this. But in Psalm 64, it’s almost startling to read of the vengeance of God and the reaction. Listen to Psalm 64, verse 7: “God will shoot at them with an arrow; [surely, or] suddenly, they will be wounded. So they will make him stumble; their own tongue is against them; all who see them will shake the head. Then all men will fear, and will declare the work of God, and will consider what He has done.” In other words, this is a picture of judgment. But notice the reaction in verse 10: “The righteous man will be glad in the Lord and will take refuge in Him; and all the upright in heart will glory,” or “will rejoice.”

And that’s the attitude of those who are under the altar, the martyrs who are longing for vengeance to come so that evil may finally be ended, and God may be glorified. It isn’t that they are indifferent toward people. Even Jesus said on the cross, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they do.” And Stephen, who was being stoned, said of those stoning him, “Don’t lay this charge at them,” which is another way of saying what Jesus said. And Paul said, “Knowing the terror of the Lord”—the judgment that is to come—“we persuade men.” And God Himself is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And God finds “no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” And Jesus says you’re never more like God than when you love your enemies and forgive them.

So there is balance in this. We long for God to be honored and God to be glorified. Our weariness—and it’s illustrated by these saints—is not about so much our condition—because these saints are already in glory, already in the sanctuary of God in heaven. And under that altar they’re in that sanctuary, and they are crying for vengeance on the wicked, not for their own sake, because they’re already in His presence, but for the sake of the glory of God so that He is not continually dishonored. That day will come. Isaiah 34 says there is coming a day of vengeance.

Isaiah 59 pictures God “[putting] on garments of vengeance for clothing”—battle gear. And it says in Isaiah 59:18, “He will repay, wrath to His adversaries, and recompense to His enemies.” And in chapter 63 of Isaiah, God says that He has planned a “day of vengeance . . . in My heart.” The heart of God will not be satisfied until He has effected vengeance on His adversaries. Through the prophet Micah, He says, “I will execute vengeance in anger and wrath on the nations which have not obeyed [Me].”

Now, we have been learning that this is defined in these chapters in Revelation, this final day of vengeance. Throughout human history, God acts out His vengeance. Most of the miracles in the Old Testament were miracles of judgment. So we have seen God’s judgment most dramatically in the Flood. But we’re looking in the book of Revelation, now, at this long section which gives the details of the time that we call the Tribulation—the seven-year period, as Daniel identifies it in Daniel 9—and in that period there are two halves. The first three and a half years our Lord calls “the beginning of the birth pains,” Matthew 24; and the second half our Lord identifies as the Great Tribulation. So Matthew 24 is His sermon on this future day, and He calls the first half “the birth pains,” and the second half “the Great Tribulation.” But Luke, in the parallel passage to Matthew 24, Luke 21, calls all of it “days of vengeance,” “days of vengeance.” You have to understand that God will get His revenge on those who have dishonored His name and His people.

The New Testament sees this as well, in some very dramatic language. Look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. This is what was revealed to Paul in regard to this, 2 Thessalonians 1:5, “This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you,” especially those who persecute believers, especially. And that’s gone on throughout the whole of redemptive history. Since our Lord came, they hated Him, and they have hated His people. But retribution is coming—relief to those afflicted and judgment on those who afflicted them.

Verse 6 again: “It is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well.” And when is this going to happen? “When the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire.” That is the final moment of this vengeance at the end of the seven years, and that’s referring to the return of Christ.

“When He comes,” verse 8, “He will deal out retribution.” To whom? “To those who do not know God.” That’s simple, that basic. If you do not know God, you’ll receive divine retribution. Another way to say it: “to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” Obey the gospel. You might not think of the gospel as a command to be obeyed, but in fact, it is.

What’s going to happen? What is this retribution to those who do not know God or obey the gospel? Verse 9, “[They] will pay the penalty of eternal destruction.” What does that mean? That they will be “away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” forever—and all of this will be finalized, verse 10, “when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—for our testimony to you was believed.”

Peter also saw that day of vengeance, and he warns in 2 Peter chapter 3, just briefly, verse 10, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief [in the night, a thief coming in the night], in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, the earth and its works will be burned up.” Verse 12, this will be a day of destruction “by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!” This could be some kind of atomic implosion of the universe as we know it, eventually. So there will be a day when our just God is vindicated and His long-awaited justice will be meted out on those who do not know Him and do not obey the gospel and have been the persecutors of His people.

Now we rejoice in that day. But I have to show you in chapter 10 of Revelation a balanced perspective on this. An angel appears in chapter 10, and he has “a little book,” which is really symbolic of the record of judgment. Mentioned that in verse 2. But down in verse 9, the angel with the little book is referred to, and it says, “He said to me, ‘Take it and eat it’”—eat the little book. In other words, “Take in the contents of this judgment.” “And [when I had eaten it,] in my mouth it was sweet as honey, and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.” And that is how you have to look at this. While judgment is sweet because it vindicates God, it is bitter because it is the eternal destruction of unbelieving humanity. And John had both emotions. When symbolically he ate the book out of the hand of the angel, it was both sweet and bitter. We take no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

Now you might be asking the question, “What is God waiting for?” Well, we do understand, don’t we, that God is extremely patient, extremely patient. But why is He patient? What is He waiting for?

Listen to 2 Peter 3:9. I referred to it a little earlier, but let me read it to you: “The Lord is not slow about His promise”—His promise of retribution, His promise of final judgment, which is the subject of this chapter. It’s not that He’s slow “as some [men] count slowness”—some think God is slow, for whatever reason. But what you’re seeing is not His slowness, but His patience—“[He] is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” Doesn’t mean the whole human race; He means “all to come to repentance” who belong to Him. He’s waiting until everybody is in the fold. And while He waits, we are given the responsibility in the world to be warning of the coming vengeance.

Paul, on Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17, said this: “[God] overlooked the times of ignorance,” Acts 17:30, “[but] is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent”—why?—“because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world.” It’s coming, and it has nothing to do with climate control; it has nothing to do with environmental efforts to save the planet. God has a day already fixed when “He will judge the world in righteousness”—and He introduces the judge—“through a Man,” Jesus Christ, “whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” Who is going to be the judge? The one who He raised from the dead. That’s what’s coming.

He commands all men everywhere to repent because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world. And in that day, God’s judgment will change this earth and this heaven dramatically. And eventually, after the kingdom of Christ, the whole heaven and earth as we know it will go out of existence and be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth. The day of vengeance is coming.

Now that gets us, then, to these seals. The first seal was to look into the future. Yes, there will be world peace, a one world government with all the features that we talked about in the last couple of weeks. It will be overseen by the man of sin that we read about in 2 Thessalonians. He’s also the little horn of Daniel, the king of fierce countenance. He is the ultimate, final world ruler that we call the Antichrist. And he will come.

He will rise to power without military conquest, to start with, because he has a bow but no arrows, and he was given a crown. He will be crowned by the world as king of the world. But his power will be assaulted very fast, so that he will wind up having to get his bows and conquer and conquer and conquer. He will be in constant war. So that’s the second rider, which depicts, following the short-lived global peace, the coming of war, war on a global scale—nation rising against nation, as Jesus said in Matthew 24, and also people killing each other, as it says in verse 4 of Revelation 6. Slaughter everywhere that takes peace from the earth, the short-lived peace.

Following the slaughter is the third seal, which is famine, conditions that will come about where you get to work a whole day—and that’s a denarius, one day’s pay, and it’ll buy you one quart of wheat, which isn’t enough to feed your family. Famine conditions also could be a reality because by then the government will be in control of the food supply, and if they want to quell the warring and the slaughter and the rebellion against them, they can withhold food.

As a result of this comes the fourth horse. The ashen horse is death, and after death comes hades, or the grave, and at that point there will be a fourth of the earth killed (two billion people) in a very rapid amount of time, killed with the sword (that is, weapons of war), famine, pestilence (that would be germs, viruses, other deadly features), and even the unleashing of the wild beasts of the earth. All of this is going on in the first half of the seven years in rapid-fire succession. It goes from global government, to global war, to global famine, to global death. That’s all happening in the birth pains, the first half.

And then John sees the fifth seal, and the saints are in view, as I said, in heaven, and they’re praying for the full vengeance of God to come. It started; they want it to be consummated. And so they cry out, “Lord, how long? Lord, holy and true, how long until You will unleash full vengeance on the blood of those who have been martyred?”

Is this a legitimate petition? It is a legitimate petition. It’s an honorable one, and I’ll show you why. But first, let’s look at the persons who are making this petition, because we have a question to ask. Who are these saints in heaven? Who are they? The church had already been raptured; they are raptured before all of this. So where do these saints come from? That’s a vital question to answer, and I want to answer it in a very direct way.

I want you to look at the seventh chapter of Revelation, which is an interlude before the seventh seal, between the sixth and seventh seal, and I want you to notice the opening eight verses. John says another vision came, “four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun”—the east—“having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and sea and saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the [slaves] of our God on their foreheads.’”

Now we’re introduced to slaves of God. The believers are all gone; who are these people? So they’re defined, starting in verse 4, as a hundred and forty-four thousand Jews, twelve thousand from each tribe. Jews today don’t know their tribe, but the Lord knows their tribe. And this will be a force for evangelism. These will be Jews who have, very early in the Tribulation, come to faith in their Messiah. “They will look on [the one] they’ve pierced and mourn for Him as . . . an only son,” Zechariah 12:10. Zechariah 13:1, “A fountain of cleansing will be opened to them.”

They will become the first great corps of gospel missionaries. And how we know that is because immediately after you introduce them, verses 1 to 8, look at verse 9, “After these things I looked”—this is consequent to the 144,000 being commissioned and protected. The result is—“a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” John has this vision of people from every group on the planet standing before the throne of the Lamb in heaven “clothed in white robes”—obviously the symbol of righteousness—“palm branches were in their hands; and they [were crying] out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” So this is a group of people who have been saved by the impact of the 144,000 Jews who had come to know their Messiah and preach the gospel, and they’re praising the Lord.

Go down to verse 13, “One of the elders”—one of the members of the church who were around the throne—“[said] to me, ‘These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they’”—they’re not the church—“‘where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘My lord, you know.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation’”—they were converted during the worst of the times of those seven years—“‘and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.’”

These have come out of the Tribulation. They may have been influenced by the two witnesses, over in chapter 11, two witnesses who are given the power to witness to the truth of the gospel. There is a monumental event—we’ll see that in 11—where the world wants to shut up these two witnesses because their testimony is so powerful. So the Antichrist kills them, and their dead bodies lie in the street. They want the whole world to see their dead bodies. And interestingly enough, they lie in the street for three and a half days; and they won’t let them bury their dead bodies because the whole world is watching their dead bodies on their iPhones and being happily satisfied that these powerful witnesses for the gospel are dead. And then they arise from the dead, verse 11: “After three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell on those who were watching them”—on their iPhones.

So there’s also, during the time of Tribulation, what we could call angelic evangelism. Chapter 14, verse 6, there’s an “angel . . . in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, to every nation and tribe and tongue and people.” So there’s an angel flying through heaven, in every language of the world proclaiming the gospel during this same time—and we’ll see more detail about all of that. So people are being converted.

Well, what is the response to that? What is the world’s response? They are satisfied to have the church gone, and they will be told some kind of lie about how the true God removed them because they were standing in the way of human attainment. And then all of a sudden they will have a whole new plethora of Christians to deal with, from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. And what will be their response? Their response will be persecution.

You go back to Matthew 24: “They will deliver you [into] tribulation, [they] will kill you,” verse 9 “you will be hated by all nations because of My name.” And “at that time many will fall away.” There will be false believers even in that time. They “will fall away,” they’ll “betray one another,” “hate one another.” “False prophets will arise . . . mislead many.” Again, Satan’s going to go to work just as he has in human history. And “the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.” How do you know who the true believers are? The ones who don’t recant, who carry their confession of faith all the way to death. “The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world”—preached by two witnesses, preached by a flying angel, preached by 144,000 Jewish converts, and preached by all the people from every tongue and tribe and nation who will proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth. And not until the gospel is “preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations” will “the end . . . come.”

Then Jesus goes on to talk about the persecution, what it will be like. It’s going to be horrible. He tells people, “Be warned”—in verse 16, if you’re “in Judea, flee to the mountains.” If you’re on a housetop, don’t go down inside your house to get anything. If you’re “in the field,” don’t “turn back to get [your] cloak.” “Woe to those pregnant,” who obviously are slowed down, and those “nursing babies . . . ! Pray your flight will not be in the winter, [not] on a Sabbath. For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.”

So this persecution will break out, and it’ll be obviously led by the Antichrist. Over in chapter 13, he is the culprit. It says in verse 8 of the Antichrist, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.” Everyone in the world will worship him, except the saints.

Verse 7, “It was given to him then to make war with the saints and overcome them, and authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given to him.” So they’re coming to salvation out of every nation, and he’s doing everything he can to massacre them. As they come out of those nations, the slaughter escalates and escalates. Many, but not all, will be killed. Many will be killed, not all, because there must be some to enter the kingdom.

So that gets us to the actual verses of chapter 6 to make some final comments. We have to know who these people are. They are “the souls . . . who [have] been slain,” verse 9, “because of the word of God, and . . . the testimony which they had maintained.” They are these faithful people who were martyred during the Tribulation and demonstrated faithfulness. They are depicted in heaven under an altar, which would be in the sanctuary of God, and it would be an altar like the altar of incense, which represents prayer. You see that back in the tabernacle and the Temple of the Old Testament.

And they are “the souls of those who had been slain,” the martyrs of those—described, as I just read you in chapter 7—saved from every tongue, tribe, and nation, chapter 13, killed by the Antichrist from every tongue and tribe and nation. Why are they martyred? Why are they killed? “Because [they were faithful to] the word of God,” they were faithful to “the testimony of Christ,” so they endured to the end faithful. And because of that, they will be hated by the world.

I think you understand that the world is going to escalate in its hostility toward Christianity. It’s doing it now, and it will continue in the Tribulation to be even worse than any time in all of human history.

So we meet them in verse 9, and we hear their petition in verse 10: “How long, O Lord?” I don’t need to go over that again. They are yelling—krazō is the Greek verb. They are saying with a loud voice, “Lord, Lord, isn’t it enough, isn’t it enough?” is their petition.

And they acknowledge God as “holy and true.” That’s a way Christ Himself is defined, back in chapter 3, verse 7. They know that God’s attributes of holiness and truth demand vengeance, they don’t know why He’s waiting; and so the answer comes, and it’s an incredible answer in verse 11: “There was given to each of them a white robe.” That is very important because somebody might say, “Well, are they out of line making this kind of prayer for vengeance? Aren’t you more like God when you forgive your enemies? Is this not a violation of that?” No, they’re not unrighteous. This is holy indignation, and it’s evident because they were given “a white robe,” “a white robe.” That is the symbol of righteousness, the symbol of holiness, purity, blessedness. So these people are righteous. They’re in heaven; they are righteous.

They’re told, then, “that they should rest for a little while longer”—be patient, be patient. John saw them two thousand years ago. It’s been two thousand years. They are told to be patient a little while. What is God waiting for? What’s He waiting for? This is, again, looking at the vision in the past, projecting the truth in the future. So these martyrs of the Tribulation will be waiting and waiting, and they will be crying for vengeance, and God will say to them, “Wait just a little longer,” and they will say, “What are we waiting for?” and this answer is stunning.

Verse 11, “A little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.” It’s not that He’s going to stop the martyrdom, He’s going to continue it until everyone who He designated to be martyred is martyred. There are more martyrs to come into heaven.

Now, of course, for them, that’s a benediction. They don’t have to flee, they don’t have to run, they don’t have to hide; they’re instantly with the Lord in the presence of His saints and angels. But isn’t it interesting that God not only ordains who will be saved, but who will be martyred? Those who are predestined for death have not all died yet. They will die soon because we’re already past the midpoint of seven years. But there are more to die. There is a full number to be reached.

Satan, the Antichrist, and the ungodly aren’t through with the slaughter. What they don’t know is this is the means God is using to bring His saints into His presence, at least some of them. And for them, for those who endure to the end, there’s a great reward, a great reward.

The world is headed in this direction. Now, however, is the day of salvation. The day of vengeance, I think, may be very near.

Father, Your Word is true. It’s clear, and it is demanding. It is authoritative. It is to be heard, it is to be believed, and it is to be acted upon. And like Paul, we, knowing the terror of the Lord, would persuade men to come to faith now, embrace Christ as Savior and Lord, and be delivered from the wrath to come and be gone with Him in the wonderful event where He comes for His own and takes us to the room He’s prepared for us in the Father’s house.

We’re not looking for the Antichrist, we’re looking for Christ our Redeemer. Lord, gather in some more of Your people, even today. We ask it for Your glory. Amen.