Revelation 6:1-17
We are sometimes amazed by the severity of God’s judgments. That is because we do not know how to ascend (by faith) into heaven. By listening to the praise of God’s perfect holiness (Revelation 4:8), by seeing in the sacrificial Lamb both divine love and the hatred of that love by rebellious man, we would be able to understand just how right, deserved and necessary the judgment is. We would also learn that nothing happens by chance. God is in control of everything which happens on the earth. Not only are His ways of judgment described in advance in this symbolic book (Revelation 5:1), but each of them occurs at the precise moment which He has decreed, when the seal is broken by the Lamb. Four horsemen appear when the first four seals are opened. They represent territorial conquest, civil war, famine and fatal disasters respectively. These will happen one after another on the earth (cf. v. 8; Ezekiel 14:21). When the fifth seal is broken, a company of martyrs appears, begging the Sovereign God to avenge them. The sixth seal is like a reply to their cry. It suggests a terrible revolution; all established authorities are overthrown.
How strange those words sound together: "the wrath of the Lamb" (v. 16; Psalms 2:12).