The sixth seal is not the end of the world. It is the moment the world sees God step back into Israel’s history: sun darkened as sackcloth of hair, moon like blood, sky receding as a scroll, every mountain and island moved, while Israel is still at peace.
Revelation 6:12–17 describes a great earthquake and atmospheric obstruction so the sun can still be seen through sackcloth-like darkness and the moon appears blood-filtered. This is not Matthew 24:29, where the sun stops giving light and the stars go out just before the Lord’s return. Stars here fall as a fig tree drops late figs when shaken by a mighty wind; they are shaken, not extinguished.
Ezekiel 38:11 places this at mid-tribulation. Gog of Magog comes against a land of unwalled villages, a peaceful people dwelling safely without bars or gates because the man of lawlessness’s covenant has protected Israel. The motive is plunder: livestock and goods in the midst of the land after the earlier seals have left the nations in famine and death.
Gog of Magog is the expander of the expanse, prince of Rosh, farthest north—Russia—with Meshach (Turkey), Tubal (Georgia), Gomer (Germany), Togarmah from the far north, Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya (Ezekiel 38:1–6; Genesis 10:2). The Lord puts hooks in the jaw and brings them down. Every man’s sword is against his brother. Pestilence, bloodshed, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone fall on Gog, his troops, and the many peoples with him (Ezekiel 38:19–22). Mountains are thrown down, steep places and walls fall. Revelation 6:13–14 describes the same shaking and the sky rolling up like a scroll—the language of nuclear detonation affecting earth and atmosphere together.
They fall on the mountains of Israel; birds and beasts devour them (Ezekiel 39:4). Fire is sent on Magog and on those who live securely in the coastlands; homelands are destroyed with the armies (Ezekiel 39:6). The nations know that He is the Lord (Ezekiel 38:23). Kings, great men, rich men, commanders, mighty men, slave and free hide in caves and rocks and cry for the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come (Revelation 6:15–17).
God is not dealing with Israel as a nation in the present dispensation of grace; He calls them “not My people” while preserving a remnant among the Gentiles. A Jew today is saved by the same gospel: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose the third day. In the tribulation the dispensation of law is under judgment. The first half God again deals with Israel; this war makes Israel realize He is protecting them. Zechariah 14:1–7 gathers nations against Jerusalem; spoils are divided; a remnant flees; the Lord fights; His feet stand on the Mount of Olives, which splits east to west; light diminishes so it is neither day nor night until evening light signals His coming.
Russia succeeds in assassinating the man of lawlessness; one of the beast’s heads is mortally wounded and healed, and the world marvels and follows him (Revelation 13:3). Two witnesses prophesy 1,260 days clothed in sackcloth; they are the two olive trees and two lampstands (Revelation 11:3–4)—Elijah and a contemporary Jew, not Enoch. The woman (Israel) flees into the wilderness to a place prepared by God and is nourished 1,260 days, given two wings of a great eagle (Revelation 12:6, 14). The Great Tribulation begins when the man of lawlessness sits as deity in the temple of God (2 Thessalonians 2:4). The church will not know who he is; that day cannot come until the standing away (the gathering of the church from the earth) and then the man of lawlessness is revealed.
After these things four angels hold the four winds so they do not harm earth, sea, or trees until the servants of God are sealed on their foreheads (Revelation 7:1–3). Another angel from the east with the seal of the living God commands the delay. 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel are sealed for physical protection so they can proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens—the Messiah coming to Israel and the earth—not the gospel of grace. They are sealed just before mid-tribulation and then spread through the earth. Levi is included because the sealing is not about land inheritance (Numbers 18:20). Joseph receives a double portion; Manasseh is listed. Dan is omitted; that tribe first set up carved images and its own priesthood (Judges 18:30). The dragon, unable to destroy the woman in the wilderness, makes war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus the Messiah (Revelation 12:17). Next the great multitude that results from their ministry (Revelation 7:9–17).
