It always goes like this. If man wants to be like God, to take might and right in his own hand, and to set up his own kingdom as ‘Babylon’, as the city and culture of man, he immediately starts to persecute and oppress those who do not expect any good to come forth from sinful and fallen ‘man’. Those who are looking and are longing to God to bring in ‘Jerusalem’, the City of God, with true peace and righteousness. The ‘city of man’ in the name of man is always built with unbridled violence. Such an empire built by man without respect for God and His Laws will always immediately clash with man who wants to follow His divine instructions. Those will be oppressed, driven to the edge of society and ultimately persecuted.
Let’s look at history. Didn’t the Greek spirit of Hellenism already clash with the Jewish people who rather served God in the way that He wants to be served than become followers of this Hellenism / humanism in the uprising under the leadership of the Maccabees? Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek ruler (who named himself after Zeus, the supreme Greek god) wanted to force Greek civilisation upon the Jewish people and Israel. An altar to Zeus was set up on the big altar for burnt offerings in the Temple in Jerusalem in 167 BC. A sacrifice was made to Zeus on the twenty-fifth day of each month. However, because the twenty-fifth was Antiochus’ birthday, these sacrifices were actually made to him personally—man as god. Dionysian feasts were held (Dionysius was the god of wine), swine (the most unclean animal for Jews) were sacrificed, circumcision (considered by the Greeks as a mutilation of the beautiful male body) was forbidden and the Sabbath was done away with. Here the noble Greek spirit over and against the humble Jew who tried to live in accordance with God’s revealed will and His Laws and who understood the meaning of blood as the atonement for human sins.
Rivers of blood flowed during the Jewish struggle to preserve their freedom of religion and against the desecration of their Temple. The beliefs were, and are, irreconcilable: humanistic man who is good by nature versus man who knows that he is not good as he is, but that he is a sinner, dependant on God’s grace and His commandments as a guideline for life. The same thing happened to be the case later on when, in the Roman Hellenistic world, which lived according to the same Greek philosophies, a new Jewish sect appeared: the Christians. For them, the Emperor is not God, nor are human knowledge and the human mind the acme of all wisdom, but God is the Lord and Jesus the King, and the Word of God the only ultimate Authority to live by, although with every respect to earthly governments. Rivers of blood from Christians followed this clash. And this went on for centuries. The stream of martyrs is growing alongside with the spread of the Gospel throughout the world.
Victims fall under the Romans, under Islam, under the Roman Inquisition, under Communism, under National Socialism, under dictatorships of the right and the left—often Christians together with the ‘elder members of their family’, the Jews. One quarter of humanity falls under the hooves of the ruddy, black and pale green (the colour of a corpse) horses with their apocalyptic riders.
But these innocent people we hear about in this verse who are slain form a special group. These martyrs have been slaughtered because of the Word of God (the Scriptures and the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ1) and the testimony of Jesus2 that they held. They were not the object of God’s wrath nor of the wrath of the Lamb, like it will be the case with those who fully went against God and His Commandments. Those will be met by God’s judgement in a terrible way. We read in Revelation 6:15-16: “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. 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!”
The parallel with Jesus’ discourse on the last things is clear once again: you will be betrayed, and they will kill some of you, and everyone will hate you because of Me. And yet: not a hair of your head will perish; stand firm, and you will gain life!3 Life on earth only lasts a short while in this present age, but life in the coming age will last forever.4
• This fifth seal makes it clear that the Kingdom of God will not conquer the whole world gradually, slowly but surely, as the process of ‘Christianizing’ will be successful, as many in the past believed!
• There is no basis to be found in Scripture for ‘Kuyperian’ cultural optimism claiming that everything, the whole earth + mankind will be brought under the Kingship of Christ by means of Christian politics, Christian education, Christian organisations, Christian preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Although many small scale blessings resulted from these Christian activities and actions! Nor is there a basis for the Roman Catholic notion of political power for the Church, which, by the way, is also present in the World Council of Churches. The Gospel is being spread throughout the world, with all its inherent blessings, but the devil continues to govern the world of this present darkness.5 Until the true King will arrive!
• Abraham (29 October 1837 – 8 November 1920), publicly known as Abraham Kuyper, was Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905, an influential neo-Calvinist theologian and also a journalist. He established the Reformed Churches [Gereformeerde Kerken] in the Netherlands, which became the second largest Reformed denomination in the country behind the state- supported Dutch Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. In addition, he founded a newspaper, the Free University of Amsterdam and the Anti-Revolutionary Party. In religious affairs, he sought to adapt the Dutch Reformed Church to challenges posed by increasing religious pluralism in the wake of splits that the church had undergone in the 19th century, rising Dutch nationalism, and the Arminian religious revivals of his day which denied predestination. He vigorously denounced modernism in theology as a fad that would pass away. In politics, he dominated the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) from its founding in 1879 to his death in 1920. He promoted the anti-thesis in public life, whereby Protestant, Catholic and secular elements each had their own independent schools, universities and social organisations.
Bible References:
1.John 1:14 2.Revelation 1:2 3.Luke 21:16–19; Mark 13:9–13; Matthew 24:9 4.Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30; Ephesians 1:21; Hebrews 2:5 comp. 6:5 5.Ephesians 6:12; Matthew 4:8-9 and Romans 8:18-21
