Revelation 6:9-11

(9-11) The fifth seal differs from the four earlier seals. It is not introduced by the voice of the living beings, and the cry “Come.” The voice which is now heard is not the cry of the groaning world, but of the oppressed and troubled Church. In the fourth seal the climax of world-sorrow seemed to be reached in the accumulation of war, famine, pestilence, and noisome beasts. It declared to the evangelist that there were evils which would continue and even increase in the world. “Ye shall hear of wars; nation shall rise against nation.” Social troubles, war, poverty, and privation would still exist; religious troubles, evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse. Worldly policy, selfishness, and the untamed passions of mankind would still trouble humanity. Then if such troubles and disorders remain, what has the Church been doing? Where is the promise of that early vision of victory? The answer is given in the fifth seal. The Church has been following her Lord. As the vision of Bethlehem and the angel-song of “peace on earth” passed, and made way for the agony of Gethsemane, the cross of Calvary, and the cry “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” so the glowing dream of a quick conquest over all evil passes away, and the picture of an agonising, persecuted Church takes its place, and the voice of its anguish is heard, “How long, O Lord!” The Church has her Bethlehem, her Nazareth, her Gethsemane, her Calvary, her Easter morn; for Christ said, “Where I am there shall also My servant be” (John 12:26). The seals, then, are not merely visions of war, famine, &c., they are the tokens that the victory of Christ’s Church must, like her Lord’s, be a victory through apparent failure and certain death. The four seals proclaim her apparent failure; she has not brought peace and social and political harmony to the world. The fifth seal shows her suffering, the witness of the servants of Christ has been rejected; in the world they have tribulation (John 16:33).