12 And when He had opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became dark as sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. 13 And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree, shaken by a strong wind, drops its unripe figs. 14 And the heavens were hidden, rolled up like a scroll; and every mountain and island moved out of their places. 15 And the kings of the earth, and the nobles, and the rich, and the captains of thousands, and the mighty, and every slave, and every freeman, hid themselves in caves and in the ravines of the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and to the stones, 'Fall upon us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.' 17 For the great day of his wrath is come, and who can stand?

Comment

Open. 6. The Lamb of God, who appears before the throne of heaven, opens the seals of the book of the sacraments, the book in which the future destinies of the Church of Peace are recorded, full of struggles, catastrophes, trials and sufferings, depicted in the vision of the opening of the seven seals. It must be said that the Apostle John uses the number seven in the text of the entire Apocalypse. We have already seen epistles to the seven churches, followed by seven seals, seven trumpet sounds, seven voices from heaven, seven visions. The Apocalypse can be divided into seven big sevens, because it speaks of the fulfillment of times, of completeness, of what will happen when the history of the world ends.

Open. 6, 1–8. The first four seals, four horsemen. Already in the book of the prophet Isaiah we see images of horsemen – bearers of the scourge of God, the thunderstorm of God. Horsemen-messengers of God's destinies were also depicted in the book of the prophet Zechariah. Who are these four horsemen in the Apocalypse? This is a depiction of the catastrophes that will befall the world, the most difficult, transitional, critical epochs.

The first horse is the Empire. In this case, it is the Roman Empire, because it is a white horse, triumphant, a victorious rider, with a bow; He is ahead. In the time of the Apostle John, the Roman Empire united the world. And every time empires appeared, a difficult and difficult time came for the church. The second rider - a red horse - is war. An attempt to forcibly unite people together leads to endless wars and mutual killings.

The third seal, the third horseman, is hunger. A black horse, a rider who has a measure, that is, scales. "And I heard a voice... — a hinix of wheat for a denarius." At the time when the Apostle John lived, mass starvation began everywhere, moreover, for a denarius you could buy only a handful of wheat or barley. Meanwhile, the grapes yielded a huge harvest, the storerooms were full of vessels of wine, and widespread drunkenness was rampant in countries where hunger tormented people. And in the nineties, at the time when the Apocalypse is believed to have been written, the emperor even issued a decree to cut down vineyards, because people, instead of sowing wheat, planted grapes. Wine and oil, that is, that which is not necessary, which people can do without—this was enough, as it sometimes happens with us—there is wine on the shelves, but there is no necessary thing. And here it is exactly the same – there is no most important thing – bread, barley and wheat, but there is wine and oil.

Finally, the last and final ones in this terrible procession are the two demons. In the Canaanite pantheon there were two terrible deities, whose names in Russian mean Hell and Death. Later, in Old Testament terminology, the demons of death were called this way, and here the Apostle again returns us to these images: a rider on a pale horse, pale, like a dead man. His name is Mot, in Greek death, and hell followed him; Siobhan followed him, and they came to have dominion over a quarter of the earth. In all such periods, we see the catastrophic consequences of violence, war, and man's turning away from God.

But what is the matter? What happened at the time the apostle wrote? This is what the opening of the fifth seal tells us. "And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who were slain for the word of God"...

(Rev. 6:9-II). The cry of blood is an ancient image. Already in the Book of Genesis, when Abel was killed by Cain, the Lord says: "Blood cries out to heaven." So, there is some mysterious law in the world, which the Greeks call the law of Dike, which the Indians call the law of karma, which we call the law of retribution. Evil cannot remain unavenged, it must somehow be balanced somewhere, in this or that world, as the biblical words say: "The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the earth." It demands retribution, and here is not just blood, but the souls of those killed for the word of God.

The massacre that began in 64 AD in Rome spread to other areas. For the first time we learn about this not only from hints in the New Testament, but also from the report of the Roman historian Tacitus, who in the 15th book of his Annals writes that Rome suffered a huge fire in 64, almost the entire city burned down, and only four quarters remained. And when popular discontent fell on the government, the emperor, in order to avert the anger of the people, began arresting Christians, accusing them of setting fire to the city. A great many people were seized, as Tacitus writes, "a great multitude." Some of them were sewn into animal skins and thrown into the arena to be torn apart by wild animals. Some were tied to trees in the park, they were doused with tar and set on fire: burning Christians illuminated the night park. And the emperor himself rode along the alleys of the park in a chariot, watching this spectacle. And, writes Tacitus, who hated Christians, popular sympathy turned to them, because people began to understand that all these martyrs died not for their real guilt, but at the whim of one person. It is believed that it was at this time that the Apostle Peter also died. He was crucified on the Vatican hill, where his tomb is now discovered, and directly above it is the altar of St. Peter's Basilica. During the last war, archaeologists began to dig under the altar, found an ancient cemetery and there the grave of the Apostle Peter and even the bones, which are believed to belong to the apostle himself. Those of us who would like to have a good idea of this epoch can read about it in the book "Kamo Gryadeshi" by Sienkiewicz, where the persecution of Christians is depicted quite correctly, close to history. And here we have before us these martyrs, whom St. Clement of Rome calls "Danaïdes and Dircians" because they were supposed to depict on the stage the sufferings of the heroines of ancient mythology, and all the horrors that happened to these heroines were done to them.

Of course, some people wonder why these martyrs are shown here, if it is said "not to judge and not to take revenge." It is good to talk about it at home, in a calm atmosphere. And when people were in the camps, when they saw the extermination of a mass of people, everyone felt the need for trial. One of the prisoners of conscience of our time in the camp wrote in his notes that the Last Judgment is necessary, like the Nuremberg trials, it is necessary for man, otherwise there will be no righteousness of God, no justice, otherwise it is impossible; A person demands this in the depths of his soul. Something has been trampled upon, which cannot simply be removed, but must be eliminated.

And finally, the sixth seal (Rev. 6:12-17). Some interpreters believed that the terrible catastrophes that shook the world at the time when the Apocalypse was being written, as it were, awakened John's soul to these images. Let me remind you that the eruption of Vesuvius, in which Pompey and Herculaneum died, took place just in these years, and in the archipelago where Patmos was located, there were a number of eruptions. But they believe that this kind of explanation is not enough. Everything that we are reading now is taken from the Old Testament. These images: the darkened sun, the sky twisted like a scroll, the moon and the stars falling like figs – all these are images of the coming Manifestation of God: when the Creator enters, invades the world of nature, the whole world melts – the mountains melt like wax, the hills dance, the earth trembles. Read the third chapter of the book of the prophet Habakkuk, and you will see what the approach of the Lord means. The opening of the sixth seal is a symbol of the Lord's approach.

Many people try to find some kind of analogy in modern earthquakes. To this I can only say that there is a certain mystery here: it is possible (I emphasize, only possible) that in deep moral and political crises nature reacts in such a way that some catastrophic processes are intensified. I do not insist on this, but I believe that it is possible.I think that nature is "not a cast, not a soulless face", as Tyutchev wrote about it, that it can shudder in those days when people go beyond the measure of iniquity, and then famine arises, drought arises, the sky closes, an earthquake occurs.

How this could have happened in antiquity, we now know from the excavations of Pompeii. We see these people, casts of which are now in museums, the streets taken by surprise, even a dog with a collar on which it is written that it saved its owner three times, it tried to save him the last time and died with him. They also found there a room where there was an altar and a cross, where Christians lived. An earthquake and such catastrophes are the most terrible, but perhaps the most impressive image of God's judgment. But nature, of course, acts "on a large scale" and strongly; when it begins to tremble, it does not act as the judgment of God, but destroys both the right and the guilty. It is like an enraged war elephant of old, which, if wounded, turned and began to trample on its own. The spiritual, inner meaning of the opening of the sixth seal lies in the nearness of Theophany. This does not mean at all that the earth is over, although here, it seems, the stars fell from the sky, and the sun... Further events on the ground will be described. And this is the nearness of the Epiphany.