B. Second Seal: Conflict on Earth (6:3-4)[/CENTER]Q: Does the same type of warfare take place when the second seal is opened, or is there a difference?
A: This time the people are not attacked by an outside force, but they slay one another instead.Mark A. Copeland, a Preterist, says of this passage that it “[r]epresents
civil war, in which people would kill one another, such as God used in His judgment against Egypt (Isa 19:1-4).”
This certainly fits the language used here. As a historical fact, in the fall/winter of 67 AD a brutal civil war broke out in Jerusalem and Judea between the revolutionaries and those who wanted to maintain peace with Rome. Jerusalem was eventually divided into three factions led by [1] Eleazar, who was over the Zealots [2] John of Gischala, who was over the Galileans, and [3] Simon, who was over the Idumeans. It remained this way until the city was destroyed. The conditions were awful. In one night 8500 people were killed, and their bodies were cast outside of Jerusalem without being buried.
The outer temple was “overflowing with blood” and the inner court even had pools of blood in it. Homes and gravesites were looted (For more information, see Footnote #1).Steve Gregg, in his book “
Revelation: Four Views (A Parallel Commentary),” quotes from J. Stuart Russell, who says (p. 106),
The Jewish war, under Vespasian, commenced at the furthest distance from Jerusalem in Galilee, and gradually drew nearer and nearer to the doomed city. The Romans were not the only agents in the work of slaughter that depopulated the land; hostile factions among the Jews themselves turned their arms against one another, so that it might be said that “every man’s hand was against his brother.”
Gregg also quotes Josephus (from Wars, 2:18:2): “Every city was divided into two armies encamped one against another…so the daytime was spent in shedding of blood, and the night in fear.” Gregg himself adds (p. 108) that these verses in Revelation 6:3-4 substantiate the words of Jesus when He wept over Jerusalem:
The Jews had rejected the Prince of Peace, who had said, while weeping over Jerusalem, “If you had known…the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42). The next words Jesus spoke predicted the Roman armies invading the land and leveling the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:43-44). What could speak more directly to the fulfillment of this threat than for Revelation to speak, as here, of one sent to take peace (v. 4) from the land?
Zechariah also had predicted this as a consequence of the Jews’ rejection of Christ (Zech. 11:10-14).At this point, it would be valuable to note that the Preterist viewpoint (which sees this as fulfilled in the land of Israel in the first-century) would be less plausible if the phrase “the earth” here refers to the entire globe.
In chapter one,
[2] we already got the sense that the predicted events in this book were to be localized, and that they had to do primarily with the land of Israel/Palestine as it existed in John’s day. You may recall that we compared the language of Revelation 1:7 with Matthew 24:30 and Zechariah 12:10-14, and saw (for example) that the term “tribes of the earth” clearly had to do with the tribes of the land of Israel.
Kenneth Gentry is especially helpful in his book, “Before Jerusalem Fell” (1998, pp. 128-131), in explaining that “land” and “earth” are often used interchangeably in Scripture, with a meaning that is localized rather than global.A quick glance at a couple of New Testament Scriptures begins to demonstrate this. For example, relating the circumstances surrounding Christ’s death on the cross, Matthew 27:45 in the ESV states, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all theland until the ninth hour.” A footnote says that “earth” could have been used instead of land in this text, but most readers will conclude that this darkness was localized that day and not global.
Looking also at Luke 21:20-24, the context likewise shows that these events belong to Judea and Jerusalem, and even Futurists generally agree that this passage speaks of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem from 67-70 AD. Yet verse 23 says, “…For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people.”
The phrase “this people” here no doubt refers to the unrepentant Jews, and “the earth” here is the land of Judea.
Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth ..." --John Hagee
