Revelation 6:9The Waiting of the Invisible Church.

We may gather with all certainty from this wonderful revelation of the inner mysteries of the heavenly court—(1) that God has a fixed time for the end of the world; (2) that God has fixed that time according to the measures of the work which He has to finish. Even as Christ had a work to finish on earth, so that we read again and again that His "hour was not yet come," in like manner now in heaven He has a definite foreseen scheme for the administration of His mediatorial kingdom; and according to the accomplishing of this work will be the time of His coming. So much in a general way, but in this passage we have something more definite and detailed.

I. He has shadowed out to us the nature of the work that He has to do before the end comes; that is, to make up a certain number whom God has foreseen and predestined to life eternal. This then in general is the nature and direction of the mystery of this seemingly entangled world Out of the midst of it He is drawing the children of the regeneration, knitting them in one fellowship, in part still visible, in part out of sight. When the Son of God passed into the heavens He began to draw after Him a glorious train of saints, like as the departing sun seems to draw after him the lights which reflect his own splendour, till the night starts out full of silver stars.

II. Again, in this gathering out of the mystical body of His Son, God is carrying on the probation of mankind. In the inscrutable secrets of His providential government, He is so ordering the strife of the seed of the woman with the seed of the serpent, of the Church with the world, as to fulfil the manifold purposes of love and of long-suffering. And (1) we see that this long-permitted strife is ordained for the perfecting of His saints. (2) This mysterious work has an aspect of long-suffering towards sinners. It is thus that God gives them a full season for repentance. (3) We see from all this what ought to be the master aim of our lives; that is, to make sure of our fellowship in that mystical number.

H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. i., p. 333.

Revelation 6:11The Intermediate State.

I. In this passage we are told that the saints are at rest. "White robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season." The great and anxious question that meets us is, What is to become of us after this life? We fear for ourselves, we are solicitous about our friends, just on this point. Now here Scripture meets our need. It is enough, surely, to be in Abraham's bosom, in our Saviour's presence; it is enough, after the pain and turmoil of this world, to be at rest.

II. Next, in this description it is implied that departed saints, though at rest, have not yet received their actual reward. "Their works do follow them," not yet given in to their Saviour and Judge. They are in an incomplete state in every way, and will be so till the day of judgment, which will introduce them to the joy of their Lord. (1) They are incomplete inasmuch as their bodies are in the dust of the earth, and they wait for the resurrection. (2) They are incomplete as being neither awake nor asleep; they are in a state of rest, not in the full employment of their powers. (3) There is an incompleteness also as regards their place of rest. They are "under the altar," not in the full presence of God, seeing His face and rejoicing in His works, but in a safe and holy treasure-house close by, like Moses "in a cleft of the rock," covered by the hand of God and beholding the skirts of His glory. (4) The intermediate state is incomplete as regards the happiness of the saints. The blessed in their disembodied state admit of an increase of happiness, and receive it. "They cried out in complaint, and white robes were given them; they were soothed and bid wait a while."

III. Nor would it be surprising if, in God's gracious providence, the very purpose of their remaining thus for a season at a distance from heaven were that they may have time for growing in all holy things and perfecting the inward development of the good seed sown in their hearts. As we are expressly told that in one sense the spirits of the just are perfected on their death, it follows that the greater the advance each has made here, the higher will be the line of his subsequent growth between death and the resurrection.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iii., p. 367.

Revelation 6:16The Consequences of Sin.

I. The wages of sin are paid with a fearful compound interest, and the real terror of evil is that it does not die with its immediate author. It lives with a strange, vicarious life, ramifying, developing, multiplying, hideously replenishing the earth, till the lust of one ancestor, and the intemperance of another, and the pride, and the jealousy, and the selfishness of others, have intertwined and interwoven and invested their posterity with a thousand incapacities, and hindrances, and weaknesses, and tendencies to evil; and the world has become one great discord of pain, and sorrow, and misunderstanding, and intellectual failure, and moral palsy, and spiritual death.

II. Throughout the ages man has been incessantly impelled to ask, What is there in moral evil more than meets the eye? What will sin turn out to be when we see it in the light of the real world? And if we confine ourselves to observation of history, quite apart from revelation, Shakespeare's words are literally true,

"The weariest and most loathèd worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death."

III. The judgment of man upon himself has been that the consequences of sin cannot but last beyond the grave. If we will from time to time think upon these facts—the fact of the present consequences of moral evil and the fact of the gloomy forebodings with which the sight of these consequences time out of mind has filled the heart of man—we shall be in less danger of the popular modern fallacy which insults alike both the human dignity and the Divine by promising to sin apart from repentance an amiable obliteration, forgetting that hell, after all, may be the last prerogative of the human will.

J. R. Illingworth, Sermons, p. 48.

I. Consider the ideas presented to us and apprehended by faith when Jesus Christ is revealed under the name of the Lamb. (1) One of these, doubtless, is the idea of meekness. It was not as a stern and just Judge that He came to save the world, or as a Monarch in the pride of state, or a Conqueror flushed with victory. He was humble and gentle, of poor parents, and from a despised town, born in a stable and cradled in a manger. He sits on the throne of heaven and earth, but still it is the throne of the Lamb. (2) Another idea comprised in this appellation is that of perfect purity and innocence. Not only was every animal used in the typical services of the Temple to be free from imperfection, but Christ was expressly compared to a lamb without blemish and without spot, and most exactly was the type fulfilled. (3) The leading idea of the title "the Lamb" is the atonement Christ made for sin by the sacrifice of Himself upon the cross.

II. Consider the awful words of our text: "The wrath of the Lamb." The meek and holy Being, who is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, has His wrath; and His wrath is the more terrible because He is meek and lowly and the propitiation for all sins. Mercy neglected is guilt incurred, and in proportion to the love displayed in man's salvation is the ingratitude of evil, and must be the condemnation of those who reject Him. (1) "Behold the Lamb of God." And who is He? He is a Man, but no mere man, for no man ever spake or lived as this Man. An angel? "He took not on Him the nature of angels." God was manifest in the flesh, and God and man, one Christ, bore our sins and atoned for them on the cross; and can we think that such love, beneath the conception of which the mind staggers, half incredulous of mercy so infinite—can we ever think that it can be neglected without guilt, and may be for ever set at nought with impunity? (2) Again, consider the price paid for our redemption, the exceeding bitterness of the cup which He drained that our souls might be healed. Christ has no recompense except that you should believe and be saved, and in every repenting and returning sinner He sees of the travail of His soul, the reward of all His sufferings, and is satisfied. And if you will not, if all has been suffered for you in vain, surely your ingratitude, cold-heartedness, neglect, must add tenfold terror to the wrath of the Lamb. (3) Remember the plainness of the warnings that are used and the mercy of His invitations. Past mercy will enhance future judgment; the love of Christ will shine at the last day upon the open books; and in its bright beam will stand out, in dark, plain characters, the guilt, the folly, the ingratitude, of those for whom Christ died, and who would not live for Christ.

J. Jackson, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 780.

References: Revelation 6:17.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 153. Revelation 7:1-3.—Ibid., 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 134.