9 Great Earthquake

Painting by G. Roland Smith

Listen to Revelation 6:12-17:

The Seals

6 ¹² I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, ¹³ and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. ¹⁴ The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

¹⁵ Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. ¹⁶ They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! ¹⁷ For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

9 Great Earthquake

Here we have the opening of the sixth seal, and a picture of catastrophic upheaval affecting both the heavens and the earth. Strange as this vision is, you are actually learning about some of the inner turmoil, or ‘highs and lows’, that men and women experience. That is what the Book of Revelation is all about. If it were merely about someone’s weird nightmares or nice dreams, it would be of little use. But it is very reassuring that even strange states can be regarded as quite ‘normal’ – nothing to be frightened of!

This image suggests that sometimes it feels as if the world we have been living in is violently shaken and everything turned upside down. All the things or people we felt we could rely on seem to disappear. Mirrored here are those times on our spiritual journey when we suddenly experience a breakdown in how we have understood and viewed our life. The ‘light’ goes out, our world feels as if it’s being turned upside down. We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth.

“I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black … the … moon turned blood red … the stars in the sky fell to earth.”

(chapter 6 verses 12 and 13)

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