These visions confront us with the utter folly of the idea that we can remain neutral in this question of God and the world. You either identify yourself with the saints or with the damned. This is counterintuitive, of course. In our day, the very mention of those who were dead — who were martyrs — might suggest that believing as they did had led to their suffering and their loss, and that it were far better for us to abandon faith in order to have greater security here on earth. But these visions demonstrate that it is the reverse that is true. It is the faithful who have the greatest security of all, both in this life and in the world to come.

We looked last time at the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” as they’re sometimes described in secular literature. As these four riders come forth, the first with conquest on its mind, and then through strife and war — civil war – strife between nations resulting in scarcity on the earth, scarcity of goods, and so on, and ultimately bringing death to humanity. It’s a repeat of human history. Human history, if you will, is a kind of on repeat, it’s as if it’s a piece of music that you’ve put on repeat, that keeps playing over and over again. Conquest, strife, scarcity, death. Conquest, strife, scarcity, death. It’s the story of humanity.

We dug a bit deeper last time as we looked at these four riders again. And we looked at the first rider again and noticed how out of place he is with the others. Although he has conquest on his mind, and we can very easily place that in the hands of some dictator, some emperor, some great leader somewhere who has only winning and conquest on his mind, we also noticed that this language of conquest has been used throughout Revelation up to this point with reference to Christ who conquered Death and Hades, and with reference to the Christian who’s called on to overcome. To overcome the temptation to cave into false teaching, to cave into the behavior of the world, to conquer sin, and to conquer over teaching and thus to demonstrate that they are indeed faithful to the Lord. And as the faithful go out to win their spiritual crown, as it were, not by, not by subjugating peoples; they nevertheless find themselves locked into a way of life whereby the more they talk about Jesus, the more division they sow wherever they go. Jesus said, “I have come not to bring peace on earth, but a sword that divides children from their parents, spouses from each other, people within their own family context, within nations.” How do they divide? They divide over Jesus.

And Christians very often have been the ones who have suffered alongside the poor of the world from these scarcities that affect and afflict humanity. Well, one way or another, whether it’s being caught up in the convulsions of the world, or caught up in the persecution of the church, believers find themselves caught in the vortex of these events.

Now when this passage then talks about Death and Hades being given power over a fourth of the earth to kill with a sword and with famine and with pestilence and epidemics and by the wild beasts of the earth, there seems to be the end of that, you would think, that’s a kind of strange thing to put in alongside the sword and the famines and the pestilences. Yes, the wild beasts of the earth certainly attack human beings, but in the context of the book of Revelation they stand for something far different. Because there’s going to emerge later in the book monsters.

We think of what Paul says about the state, and our relationship to the state, in Romans 13. The powers that be are ordained of God; they are ministers of God to encourage the good and to punish the evil in society. That’s how they described in Romans 13. In Revelation 13, the same powers that be become monsters, beasts who destroy rather than protect. Who eat up the people, gobble them up, in or for their own purposes and cause great cruelty and loss. And then there’s the great Dragon, the devil himself who’s introduced in chapter 12. There are wild beasts that we face as Christians that are superhuman, supernatural institutions, movements, personalities in the course of world history. Both past and in the future his great goal is to gobble up the church and spit her out.

Well, it’s in the context of that then that John speaks under the fifth seal. First of all, about the souls of the martyrs:

“I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.”

Revelation 6:9

Why an altar? Well, because on the altar was slain the animal for sacrifice. And why at the base of the altar? Because the blood from the victim flowed down and was captured around the base of the altar. And so what in using this symbolism, what John is being taught is that Christian people, as they live their lives in the world, are laying their lives on an altar of sorts. They’ve made a decision to give themselves over to God. To be God’s possession. They’re placing their inclinations, their desires, their will on the altar. “All on the altar they lay.” They are, they’re presenting to God their bodies “as a living sacrifice,” Paul says, that God can use for his glory whether in life or in death. They’re doing what the Apostle Paul does taking his own medicine to heart, when he says concerning his own up-and-coming execution: “I pour out my life as a as a water offering, a drink offering, pouring it onto the ground, as it were, pouring out my blood, my life in the service of God.” There’s a sense in which what the martyrs do in a very physical raw way, that is, they die — literally die — for Jesus. All of us who are Christians do at one level or another, as we give ourselves increasingly to the Lord, and lay all that we have on the altar, bring all the praise that is within our hearts, and focus it upon him, bring ourselves in as much as we can and lay our lives on the altar for God’s service.

Well, of course this passage is dealing not only with that sacrifice in general but sacrifice in particular – the martyrs. Those who have been slain. And you see how related to Jesus they are. This very same language is used of Jesus. Back in chapter 5, he is “the Lamb who has been slain.” Here are these believers who have been slaughtered, those who have been slain. The language is the same. Why? Because their being slain is connected with the Jesus who was slain. They are being slain for him. He was slain for us. He sees the altar. He sees the souls. These are the disembodied spirits or souls of just men and women. These are the believing dead.

You will know that you have a soul — that the soul is your individual person, who you are is your soul. No doctor can see it. I’ve had the privilege of being a minister for a long time, and I’ve been present when people have died in all kinds of circumstances. And there’s that moment when they’re gone. What’s left is the remains. The person who once inhabited those remains has gone; their soul has gone. That’s what’s being described here. Souls are therefore by definition immaterial and incorporable. In other words, they’re not made of stuff. They don’t, there’s no material to a soul. They have no form as such. And yet nonetheless we discover that these souls were able by John to be seen. I think we have a little clue as to what’s going on here in Second Corinthians, where the Apostle Paul tells us this:

“We know that if our earthly house of this tent be dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

2 Corinthians 5:1

You check out 2 Corinthians, you’ll find out that he’s not there talking about the resurrection body; but this is a spiritual body — a heavenly body — that is yours the minute you die and go into the presence of Christ and will do you perfectly well until you get your final resurrected physical body back perfect next time in every respect. That’s what he sees. He sees the redeemed in their heavenly form as they await the resurrection of the body.

And the key thing to notice is that they are alive; their bodies are dead, their blood is at the base of the altar, as it were. They’ve been sacrificed for their commitment to Jesus. But here they are, as Paul puts it:

“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 5:8

When you depart here, Paul says, like a ship going, taking off from the port, when you depart here you arrive in the presence of Jesus in the port of the new Jerusalem, and you are with Christ, which is by far the best. Why were they slain? They were slain “for the word of God and the witness that they bore.” This is language we find again throughout Scripture. They die because they professed and confessed before the world the one living and true God. Whether it was the saints before Christ or the saints after Christ, they have confessed the one living and true God against the polytheism of the tribes round about. The polytheism that gripped the Greek, the Greco-Roman world of the period, or the Caesarism, that is, Caesar’s attempt to be treated as a human god and to be worshipped as a human god. They had confessed contrary to both of those, swimming against the tide of their culture.

They confessed the one living and true God, and they confessed their testimony, that is, the testimony of Jesus. They had spoken about him who was crucified, “a stumbling block to Jews, a total foolishness to the Gentiles”; but they confessed Jesus as Lord. Here’s how Jesus put it in John chapter 3: “He who comes from above [that’s him] is above all.

“He who comes from heaven is above all, he bears witness to what he has seen and heard , yet no one receives his witness. He who receives his witness sets his seal to this: that God is true.”

John 3:32-33

These saints received and believed the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Have you? They held on to it. Are you? They were building their destiny on it. Are you? They had freely given their lives in his service rather than deny him or abandon their faith in him. We know some of their names: Antipas, who was killed in Pergamum, Stephen and James in Jerusalem, Peter and Paul in Rome. These and countless others through the history of the church have followed Paul’s counsel literally to the letter:

“Present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”

Romans 12:1

As the powers on earth pursue conquest on their own terms, using strife and scarcity and famine and pestilence and sword to impose death, God’s Holy Spirit within this little flock, the church, conquer by suffering these things, these — the strife and the scarcity and the death. These very things that the world is terrified of — death being the final thing the world is terrified of — is the very means by which God’s people are ushered immediately into the presence of the Lord. We see the souls of the martyrs, and we hear the cry of the martyrs. Here are the saints in glory, and you notice the saints and glory are engaged with their events on earth.

“They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

Revelation 6:10

They’re drawing a line, you see, those in heaven; those on earth. I want you to see what they’re not doing. They’re not speaking out of turn. This is not a symptom of a desire to have a vendetta or to have personal revenge. These people are now in the presence of God. They’re right at the throne of God. They could not be nearer to God as creatures than they are in the presence of the Holy One. They cannot be anything other than holy in all of their ways. They have been purified – their mind, their desires, their perception, their will, their inclinations. Their mouth and what they say all have been purified and perfected by immediately finding themselves in the presence of the holy God. And as such, what they were told to do on earth is their instinctive action. They’ve been informed by the word of God. Paul writes to the Romans, he says this:

“Beloved, never avenge yourself, but leave it to God. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

Romans 12:19

So here are these glorified spirits in heaven, and they’re coming to God and they’re saying to God, “You said.” We didn’t take revenge on earth, now we’re coming to you. It’s time for things to be put right. On earth, we turned the other cheek; in earth, we loved our enemy. But now we come to you, and we ask you for justice.” That’s what they’re asking for. These martyrs had suffered not because they were sinners, but because they were faithful to Jesus.

I wonder if you found yourself in circumstances in your life – you’ve been abused by someone, you’ve been misused by somebody, you’ve been accused by someone wrongfully. I wonder if you’ve ever found yourself asking the question “Does God care?” Will the wicked shed blood? Will they trample all over the righteous? Will they get away for it forever? Is God indifferent, or is God impotent? Does he have no power to do anything about this? Then listen to their cry: “How long, Lord?” This is the cry that’s found on the lips of God’s afflicted people right from the very earliest days of history. When Abel, remember, was murdered by his brother, Cain; and the Lord comes to Cain and says to Cain, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground?” And we hear this cry throughout Scripture:

“My soul is sorely troubled, but thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long, O God of hosts? Will you have not of mercy on Jerusalem?”

They come to God with their cry. Look who they pray to: “O Sovereign Lord.” The language of Abraham in Genesis 15, when he speaks of God this way: “O Sovereign Lord”. Joshua and Isaiah use the same language. The persecuted church in Acts chapter 4 lifts their voice together to God, saying,

“Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. Lord, give, give a view to what these people are doing to us.”

It’s used of Jesus in Jude:

“The only Sovereign and Lord Jesus Christ.”

Jude 4

They’re praying to God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They pray to the Father because they belong to the Son; and because they belong to the Son they belong to the Father, and he’s their very own Father. And I want you to notice their prayer is not a whisper. It’s not tentative; they’re not unsure of themselves. They’re in the very presence of Almighty God. You think, you’d think they would keep quiet for a moment, but no, they don’t. They cry out to him. They cry out to him. They are appealing to the throne of God. They know God, and they know God well enough to know that God gives an ear whenever you bring up his promises and what his Word says, what he says about himself in the Word. So they bring these things to God. And they cry out “How long?”. What started as a solo back in the days with, the days of Abel, has grown and grown and grown through the centuries to the thousands of years that have passed since the days of Abel to a loud roar, as myriad voices have joined together: “How long, O Lord? How long, O Lord?”

All that blood, all that blood as it were, beating against the door of heaven demanding justice. God’s people have been praying it generation after generation. “How long, oh Lord, will you hide yourself? How long, O Lord of hosts, will you be angry with your people’s prayers?” Tell me, have you ever prayed like this? You ever felt so frustrated, so downright angry at the world — your world, your personal world — and felt that God was indifferent. Be honest with yourself. Be honest to God. “How long?” And see how, how they how they address this. They remind themselves of who God is as they speak to him; you should do that too.

 “How long, holy and true”

Revelation 6:10

The Father is holy and true, the Son is holy and true, the Holy Spirit is said to be holy and true. Holiness and truth run right through God. We come to the God who is holy, and we come to the God who’s absolutely true to his Word, true to his character. And we know this, that divine holiness and divine truth demand the judgment of a world in which the innocent suffer, the powerful are responsible, and the deaths of the righteous are on the blood-spattered hands of other people. This cry uttered by the saints perfected in glory is the cry of outraged justice. And out of compassion for in sympathy for the suffering church down below on earth, and a disconsolate nature — creation — that is groaning in travail and pain right now. Our planet, our universe, groaning under the weight of human sin, longing for its renewal at the end of all things.

When you pray like this gutsy prayer: “How long, O Lord?” all you’re doing is saying in the rawest possible form “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The cry of the martyrs.

And then lastly, the assurance of the martyrs.

“They were each of them given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants.”

Revelation 6:11

They were given a white robe; a sign of victory, a sign of immediate, complete acceptance with God, clothed in white. They may have been condemned before an earthly court; there is no condemnation for them in the court of heaven. Justified, accepted in the heavenly court. The white is a symbol of victory as well purity, and partying, bliss, joy, happiness. The white also represents the work of a priest, someone who is able to operate right in the sanctuary in the presence of God.

In chapter 1, the white is worn by our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus. Apparently where he is, we now come into the holiest place of all. We are in fact, as God’s people, a company of priests and kings to our God involved in the heavenly worship. They’re told, they’re given a white robe; they’re told to rest. Rest for a little while. Take some rest. This is what it says, talks about later:

“Those who die in the Lord rest from their labors.”

Revelation 14:13

You don’t know how tired you are. Some of you think you’ve got an idea how tired you are, but you have no idea how tired you are, living in a world of sin the world that would disown you if it had the chances, the constant battering of the world’s ideas. They’re to rest for a little while, and they must wait for a little while. Why is God delaying? God tells them why he’s delaying – he’s delaying until, look at the language that he uses here, “till the number of their fellow servants” that is, other believers “and their brothers” that is, those who will be martyred as they were martyred, “until the number of those is full, complete.”

In the Anglican order for the burial of the dead they pray these words: “That it may please thee shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten your kingdom; that we, with all these who are departed in the true faith of thine holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thine eternal and everlasting glory.” By the way, in eternity there is very little time to pass. While the ages may be rolling on through earth, and there may be thousands of years still to come ahead of us before Jesus returns, in heaven it is all eternal now. “A little while, the sum total of all my people gathered in.”

But there’s two other reasons God delays we find elsewhere in Scripture. One is from Jesus’ lips: “This gospel must first be preached to all the nations.” There’s our great missionary challenge, isn’t it? Getting the gospel out to the nations. By doing that we’re hastening the end. But there’s another more personal reason, personally, maybe to somebody here in this room this morning or listening to me. God is showing patience towards you, Peter writes, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Why doesn’t God just sort everything out right now? Because it’d sort you out as well. And he’d sort our nation and he’d sort all the nations of the world out, and it’s not going to be a pretty sight, as we will see in the next section. But why does he delay? To give you space to repent, to allow the number of his elect to come in, and to allow time for the nations to hear, so that everybody will be without excuse, and there will be an innumerable company from every tribe and language and people group in the kingdom of God.

Have you lost a loved one, a believer? That’s where they are right now, in the very presence of God, enjoying him forever. And not afraid to speak to him about what’s happening to us here.