Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Revelation 6 before reading the devotional below.
If you’ve seen a lot of apocalypse movies, this chapter will certainly conjure up some solid “end times” images. Too many people try to predict the unpredictable and when religious people looked for the Messiah that way it backfired. So I’m certainly not going to paint any timeline of the end of the end here. But there are some things we can observe.
When the first seal is broken, we see a white horse riding out to victory. Sounds great! By the second seal, we realize we might have just been cheering for the wrong team. The first horse is just crowning a new prince. The breaking of the second seal shows what follows that prince, as peace is taken from the earth. That’s followed by injustice, death, martyrdom, and natural disasters. All of these certainly sound like power Satan has gained as the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). By the end of all this, everyone is hiding in caves from the “wrath of the Lamb.”
Verse 15 emphasizes that no matter your social status, you’ll be hiding in caves with everyone else when the Lamb comes to judge the world. It strikes me that hiding was the very first reaction to sin (Genesis 3:6-10) and it will be the very last. The Lamb is scary to those who have followed the crowned prince who rode out on horse #1. You’ve probably heard the saying, “Be on the right side of history.” That phrase is certainly an important one, especially in this moment in U.S. history. But being on the right side of eternity is even more important. Will your instinct be to hide from the Lamb in the face of destruction, or will he already know you by name?