Fall on Us

January 12, 2015

“…and said to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’" Revelation 6:16, 17

The Word quotes these sixth-seal cavemen twice. The first quote is a command to mountains and rocks. The second is a question. What do their words tell us? What does their silence tell us?

The first sentence is a somewhat illogical command for the mountains and rocks to fall on them. In making this statement, the cavemen demonstrate at least some correct understanding of the Source of their difficulties. They recognize the Holy One as the cause.

Further, they understand that this powerful Being is angry. In assigning a cause to their difficulties, they utterly shun the voice of the secularist or the atheist. They do not, for example, blame nature for their troubles. They do not assert, "It's just a cycle. Nature will clean up the air and water, and everything will be okay soon." Rather, they squarely identify the cause of their present problems to be the wrath of God.

Their second sentence is a question rather than a statement or command. In stating that "the great day of His wrath has come," they recognize that their situation is special; theirs are extraordinary times. They rightly realize that they can no more defer the effects of God's ire than they can blame those effects on nature. Their reference to "the great day of His wrath" indicates an at least superficial realization that they are facing the Day of the Lord. In asking, "Who can stand?" they recognize that they are powerless to defend themselves against the wrath of God.

In short, the window of these people's minds opens up to a substantially different landscape than what currently exists in our world. Consider how many individuals whom we would today classify as "the kings of the earth, the great men" would refer to Christ as "the Lamb"? How many "rich men, the commanders, the mighty men" know about the prophesied Day of the Lord?

Comparatively few. Perhaps some in America's Bible Belt might use this terminology, but most individuals in the wider society, the secularized, cosmopolitan masses we call the Western World, would find these concepts alien to their thinking. Moreover, most of those who are familiar with the concept of Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world or of the Day of the Lord as the coming day of His wrath are silent in today’s post Christian western world.

What is happening here? God has actually begun to transform the religious landscape of these godless men as surely as He has commenced to reform the planet's physical landscape.

These people have listened to the two witnesses' preaching, beginning at the time of the fifth seal (see Revelation 6:9). Because God's Word does not return to Him void (see Isaiah 55:11); these erstwhile movers and shakers have heeded their witness to an extent. As a result, they have a more complete—though far from perfect—understanding of God and His purposes. And they run for the hills!

Where should the events of the end times find Christians? Are we, like the unbelieving world, looking for a secure place of refuge from the scenario described to John on the Isle of Patmos in some natural hiding place? If we are, then we are as deluded as the people described here.

We, as those redeemed by the Living Christ who shed His blood to cleanse us from the sin that separates us from God must demonstrate to the world that the only place of safety at that later day is at the foot of the cross, and our only position of strength is on our knees.