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"The Four Angels of the Apocalypse" Sermon preached by John C. Hall on April 29, 2007 Text — Revelation 6:1 – 7:3
Among liberal Christians, the book of Revelation has a bad reputation. Whenever we read it, or talk about reading it in a Bible Study, you invariably hear the crack, “John of Patmos must have eaten some strange mushrooms.” It’s not an easy book to read, but it’s not as weird or irregular as it might seem. It’s a fine example of apocalyptic literature, a particular genre of ancient writing. This book, like all apocalyptic literature, was addressed to a church suffering persecution — people feeling a lot of pain. Whenever people are in a lot of pain, a question that arises is: Is there a way to see the world that helps me live in it? One answer to that question is: This painful world won’t last forever. In fact, it’s about to end, and a new world will take its place. For the people John of Patmos was writing to, the coming end was a good thing. The book sees the world in a more simplistic way than most of us see it — as a stage in which the forces of evil, those who are persecuting the church, are pitted against the forces of good, the faithful Christians. John of Patmos and his readers are big on Judgment. They look forward to the Judgment Day, the Day of the Lord, because that will be the day when their enemies will get what they deserve. Judgment is always welcome when your enemies are ones being judged, and I’m convinced that this is why, or a big part of the reason why, the book is many people’s favorite. So let’s read our passage. Then
I saw the Lamb open one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four
living creatures call out, as with a voice of thunder,
“Come!” 2 I looked, and there was a white horse! Its
rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering
and to conquer.
3 When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature call out, “Come!” 4 And out came † another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another; and he was given a great sword. 5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature call out, “Come!” † I looked, and there was a black horse! Its rider held a pair of scales in his hand, 6 and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay, † and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay, but do not damage the olive oil and the wine!” 7 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature call out, “Come!” 8 I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him; they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth. 9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; 10 they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” 11 They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number would be complete both of their fellow servants and of their brothers and sisters, † who were soon to be killed as they themselves had been killed. 12 When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. 14 The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” The main point of this chapter, its main insight, is that everything in this world, and the world itself, will end, and before it ends a lot of pain will have to be endured. That’s not exactly a cheery thought , but it’s a very realistic one. Our lives will end. And before they end, most of us will get sick for a period of time. This will happen to both the righteous and the unrighteous. And on the cosmic level, the world itself will come to an end. There will be suffering on a global scale — earthquakes, famines, disease, war, and those high food prices. No one is spared. Some people, the martyrs for example, get their suffering over with before the end. Others, the persecutors, will pay their price later, in eternity, and that will be much worse. As you know, sometimes I write opinion articles for the newspaper. Most of these have to with protecting the environment. For the first few years I did this, after every article, I would get a letter from a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Windsor. They really like the Book of Revelation, by the way. The purpose of these letters was to inform me there’s no point in trying to save the environment because the world is going to end anyway. I got so I could recognize these letters from the return address, and I’d say to myself, “Oh no, another crackpot letter. But then, I also have to admit, that this crackpot idea is right in a certain way. Someday, a long time from now, the world will end. 5 billion years from now, the sun will expand into its red giant phase and vaporize all the inner planets in the solar system out past Mars. But before that happens, long before, we have some other, more immediate problems. One of them fits right into this cosmic disaster we just read about. You’ve all heard about global warming. The earth’s atmosphere is warming up not because the sun is getting hotter yet but because of human activity. We’re taking a lot of carbon stored underground in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning it, which puts carbon back in the atmosphere in the form of CO2. This CO2 acts like a heat trap, much as the windows of your car trap heat on a sunny day. Global warming is a natural process. The earth warms up and cools off over millions of years as the carbon content of the atmosphere changes. Plants take carbon out of the air. Animals (especially humans) put it back in. And the balance changes over long periods. To the guy from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who says, “There’s no point in trying to stop or slow global warming, because it’s going to happen anyway,” I’d like to say, “If you saw a house burning, and there were people inside, would you say there’s no point in trying to save them because they’re going to die anyway”? So I disagree with the Jehovah’s Witness is that respect. But their focus on repentance is a good one, if you think of repentance not just as accepting Jesus as Savior but as trying to live the right way. But apart from that controversy, Revelation makes a solid point. There are forces in nature, and global ecology and in the human economy, forces more powerful than we are. The images of earthquakes, the sun turning black, stars falling from the sky, and the kings and rulers hiding in caves are all a way of saying: suffering is part of life for everyone. But that’s not all that’s in this passage. Let’s turn now to the four angels, stationed at the four corners of the earth before the final calamity occurs. After
this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth,
holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on
earth or sea or against any tree.
The angels are holding back the four winds of the earth (the winds from the four points of the compass) to keep them destroying the earth right away. This is a delaying tactic, so that more souls will be saved. It’s an act of mercy in the midst of the judgment. Then another angel appears, a fifth angel. I
saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal
of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels
who had been given power to damage earth and sea, saying, “Do not
damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the
servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.”
The angels delay the disaster, so that more people can see the light and be gathered to Christ. Today after worship, we have an electric car show. And we have one car, Tim and Jamie Dutcher’s, that runs on waste vegetable oil, which they collect from restaurants. What do electric cars or veggie-cars, have to do with being disciples of Jesus Christ, or living the right way? Global climate change, global warming, is a crisis that we have to face. We’re just beginning to face it. Those of us who are older won’t see the worst effects of it. But this will be a huge problem for people all over the world in the coming decades, especially people who live near the equator, the poorest people in the world. Even if all our best efforts could be implemented now, CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise for the next 50 years, until it’s at least double what it was before the industrial revolution. That’s the best we can hope for, and it’s not at all certain we’ll do that well. But almost everyone, including the vast majority of scientists, agree that the not only will temperatures rise, but weather events will intensify: more droughts, more floods, more hurricanes, stronger hurricanes, coastal flooding, and a lot of disruption of agriculture and food production. For example, one thing we’re doing here in the U.S. to use less fossil fuel is to turn corn into ethanol. Iowa corn farmers really like this. Ethanol from corn is a so-called renewable energy source because it doesn’t come from underground and growing corn takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That would seem to be good, right? But cattle farmers don’t like it. Why is that? And the poorest people in the world, in Africa for example, now find that their food supply, which up to now has consisted of surplus U.S. corn which was cheap to buy, is more expensive. Turning corn into fuel for our cars means less corn available on the market for food, and the price goes up. And the price has gone up. China’s economy is growing very fast. The growth rate is 11%. Chinese people are starting to enjoy some of the comforts and luxuries that we take for granted. That economy is also putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. To me, it’s not at all clear that humans are capable of the change that’s required to meet this challenge. There’s going to be, and there already is, a lot of suffering because of global warming. But here’s where the part of the four angels fits in. How can we at least hold back the winds of destruction to at least lessen the pain that future generations will have to feel? We can waste less energy. Wasting less energy sounds easy because it saves money. But it’s not so easy, because human habits are hard to change and even some forms of conservation require money up front. We all need to think more and think differently about energy. For me, it’s very encouraging that there even is such a thing as the New England Electric Auto Association. It’s very encouraging that someone has the interest and goes to the trouble to adapt a car to run on vegetable oil picked up at restaurants. Maybe John of Patmos was eating magic mushrooms. But he makes an important point. The world is fragile. It’s systems of life are fragile and won’t last forever. But we can be more like the four angels who hold back and delay the winds of disaster and at least minimize the suffering that all creatures, of every age, will have to endure.
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