Unleavened Bread: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sixth Seal
“Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
– 1 Corinthians 5: 8
Background
The feast of Unleavened Bread immediately followed Passover and continued for a full week. The Israelites left Egypt in such haste the following morning that there had been no time to leaven the bread, so they ate the unleavened bread of their Passover meal for the first week of their journey. The seven-day feast of Unleavened Bread commemorates their Exodus from Egypt. Because leaven is actually a bacterium that spreads and ‘corrupts’ the entire measure of flour in which it is mixed, it represents sin and the corrupting influences of the world. The theme of Unleavened Bread is cleansing from the sin and unbelief symbolized by the leaven of worldly Egypt.
Christ fulfilled this feast when he appeared to his closest disciples during the week after his resurrection, explaining his fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. His explanation of the Scriptures removed the leaven of unbelief and doubt that pervaded their understanding of his life and ministry when he failed to establish the kingdom of God. He told his disciples plainly that he had come to earth to establish the spiritual kingdom of God in peoples’ hearts through the simple expedient of faith in him. This kingdom would grow and flourish through the ministry of the Holy Spirit until Christ’s return, when he would establish the long awaited physical Kingdom of God on earth.
In a tradition that communicated this truth to each generation, adults hid small pieces of leaven for the children to find at the beginning of the feast. The children searched the house to discover the leaven, which was then thrown out, symbolically removing worldly influences from the lives of the family members. This child’s game embodies the theme of the seven-day feast of Unleavened Bread: cleansing from the corrupting influence of sin and unbelief. This feast is associated with the washbasin, the second furnishing in the temple, which was placed just outside the sanctuary. Before offering a sacrifice at the altar or entering the sanctuary, the priests were required to wash their hands and feet, symbolically cleansing themselves of the impurities of sin and the corrupting influences of the world. The washbasin is also symbolic of baptism, cleansing the conscience of the new believer from guilt.
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Revelation 6 – The Feast of Unleavened Bread
Theme: Cleansing; Discovery of the Leaven
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are almost universally viewed today as symbolizing the start of God’s end time judgments on the earth. This opinion is held because Revelation is a book of judgments, and John was told he would see events that “must take place after this.” This reasoning assumes that the Revelation narrative does not contain any historical, spiritual, or cultural background. Quite the opposite is true, and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse fall into this category, providing context for Jesus’ redemption of the earth. Without this background, the reader does not have a full appreciation of just how much the earth and mankind have been corrupted by sin since the Fall, and thus the enormity of the price Jesus had to pay to redeem us.
In the pattern of the feasts that reveals the thematic structure of the book of Revelation, chapter 6 introduces the theme of Unleavened Bread. The first six seals of the scroll are opened to reveal the leaven of six millennia of sin. The six seals provide the context of the moral state of the earth that justifies God’s coming trumpet judgments. They reveal the process whereby this once pristine planet was overcome by spiritual and physical degeneration, growing worse in each succeeding age. The first through the sixth seals reveal the reason why God is about to judge the earth.
In accordance with the Rabbinic tradition of six millennia being allotted to mankind’s rule of the earth, each seal represents an age of approximately a thousand years, except where God cut the time short for the sake of his salvation plan. The breaking of the seals shows the growing corruption caused by the moral degeneration of man and decay of the earth during each millennium. The leaven of sin and unbelief found new expression in every age, with the leaven of previous ages continuing to manifest and grow in each succeeding age. The horsemen of the first four seals represent the first four millennia of mankind’s history, between the time of Adam and the birth of Christ. They could properly be called the Four Horsemen of the Old Testament.
With the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the gates to the spiritual Kingdom of God were re-opened. Jesus restored man’s relationship with the Father lost by Adam. This was a broadside into the Kingdom of Darkness, marking the commencement of a new spiritual era. The Dragon’s response was the brutal persecution of the followers of Christ in a no-holds-barred attempt to stop the spread of the Gospel. The fifth seal symbolizes this age of persecution. The Gospel continued to spread though, accompanied by new forms of persecution and tribulation.
Like the leaven of previous ages, the physical and spiritual persecution that characterized the fifth millennium would continue to increase throughout the church age into the sixth millennium. This will only intensify as Christ’s return draws near. During this millennium, the violence, famine, sickness, war and persecution of the first five millennia continue to manifest in increasing virulent forms. Just before Christ’s return, the leaven of six ages of mankind will have worked its way through the whole of planet earth. The moral state of mankind at the end of the age will ensure that the earth is well deserving of God’s judgment. Just as the first seal revealed events at the start of the first millennium, the sixth seal shows the signs that occur at the conclusion of the sixth. Rather than introducing any new leaven, the sixth millennium is characterized by great signs that occur at the end of the age, the terminal result of sin and the decay of the earth’s systems set in motion at the Fall, and aggravated during the intervening millennia. Science, of course, will provide rational explanations for unfolding events.
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Revelation 6
And when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals I saw it, and I heard one of the four living creatures say, as if in a voice of thunder, “Come.” And I looked and a white horse appeared, and its rider carried a bow; and a victor’s wreath was given to him; and he went out conquering and in order to conquer. And when the Lamb broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come.” And another horse came out—a fiery-red one; and power was given to its rider to take peace from the earth, and to cause men to kill one another; and a great sword was given to him.
When the Lamb broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come.” I looked, and a black horse appeared, its rider carrying a balance [scales] in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice speaking in the midst of the four living creatures, and saying, “A quart of wheat for a shilling, and three quarts of barley for a shilling; but do not injure either the oil or the wine.” When the Lamb broke the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come.” I looked and a pale-colored horse appeared. Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades came close behind him; and authority was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword or with famine or pestilence or by means of the wild beasts of the earth.
When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw at the foot of the altar the souls of those whose lives had been sacrificed because of the word of God and of the testimony which they had given. And now in loud voices they cried out, saying, “How long, O Sovereign Lord, the holy One and the true, dost Thou delay judgment and the taking of vengeance upon the inhabitants of the earth for our blood?” And there was given to each of them a long white robe, and they were bidden to wait patiently for a short time longer, until the full number of their fellow bondservants should also complete—namely of their brethren who were soon to be killed just as they had been.
When the Lamb broke the sixth seal I looked, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as dark as sackcloth, and the whole disc of the moon became like blood. The stars in the sky also fell to the earth, as when a fig-tree, upon being shaken by a gale of wind, casts its unripe figs to the ground. The sky too passed away, as if a scroll were being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. The kings of the earth and the great men, the military chiefs, the wealthy and the powerful—all, whether slaves or free men—hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, while they called to the mountains and the rocks, saying, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the anger of the Lamb; for the day of His anger—that great day—has come, and who is able to stand?”
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Revelation 6 Commentary
v. 1 And when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals I saw it, and I heard one of the four living creatures say, as if in a voice of thunder, “Come.” The title deed contains a description of the earth as it existed before the Fall, in a state of perfection before sin started corrupting the world. The Garden of Eden where God had placed man was not an isolated paradise in a hostile world; it was a small fertile valley in a wonderful, perfect earth. It was the only time in earth’s history when there was neither violence nor war, no famine, no disease, suffering, persecution or even death, quite a different world from the one mankind currently inhabits. (It has been claimed that if the four horsemen of the Apocalypse were to suddenly appear now, no one would even notice a difference.)
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” Gen. 1:31 NIV
v. 2 And I looked and a white horse appeared, and its rider carried a bow; and a victor’s wreath [NIV, KJV – crown] was given to him; and he went out conquering and in order to conquer. The first seal reveals the great commission God gave to Adam. The first millennium (approx. 4000 BC to 3000 BC) was characterized by Adam’s fulfillment of his commission to populate and rule the planet. As the first created son of God (Luke 3: 38), Adam rides a white horse as a type of Christ (Rom. 5: 14), to conquer and rule the earth. (As the only begotten Son of God, Jesus fulfills the type of Adam. In Revelation 19, he is mounted on a white steed, returning as conqueror to become ruler of the earth.) The rider on the white horse here has a crown because Adam was given spiritual and physical rule over the earth: “let them have dominion over… all the earth.” (Gen. 1:26) As father of mankind, Adam rides forth with a bow to shoot his sons as arrows far and wide over the land, propagating the human race: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” (Gen. 1:28) In the pictorial Hebrew language, arrows are equated with sons, the perpetuation of one’s strength.
Because of the Fall, Adam’s progeny carried a fallen nature stained by original sin. Rather than planting trees of righteousness throughout the earth as God originally intended, the fulfillment of the great commission resulted in spreading seeds that would grow mostly stunted trees with twisted branches. Seven generations after Cain, Lamech boasted to his wives that like Cain, he too had killed a man. The corruption of his soul is revealed by the fact that he did not go to God to plead for mercy as Cain did, but instead bragged that he would be even greater than Cain. As the world spins towards final judgment, the sons of Adam continue to increase, sowing the seeds of a corrupt human nature, more than six billion strong over the earth.
v. 3-4 And when the Lamb broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come.” And another horse came out—a fiery-red one; and power was given to its rider to take peace from the earth, and to cause men to kill one another; and a great sword was given to him. The second millennium (3000 BC to 2000 BC) was characterized by the red horse of violence riding throughout the land. During this age, violence grew so prevalent that God destroyed the earth with a flood, some three and a half centuries before the end of the millennium. He was forced to cut this age short to preserve his plan of salvation. When the rain started falling, only eight souls had not corrupted their way. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.” (Gen. 6: 13) Today, a culture of violence once again covers the earth like a cloak.
v. 5-6 When the Lamb broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come.” I looked, and a black horse appeared, its rider carrying a balance [scales] in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice speaking in the midst of the four living creatures, and saying, “A quart of wheat for a shilling, and three quarts of barley for a shilling; but do not injure either the oil or the wine.”
The third millennium brought with it the specter of famine. The color black is associated in Scripture with famine: “Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.” (Lam. 5:10) Previously unknown on earth, famines were the result of droughts caused by changing weather patterns following the Flood. Prior to that time, there had been no need for rain. The earth existed in a hothouse environment due to the high water content of the atmosphere, with water coming from streams and rising from the ground as fog (Gen. 2:5-6). After the Flood, crop production depended on rainfall, which was very irregular at the time due to the new weather patterns. According to the geological record, this situation existed for few hundred years before weather and rainfall patterns stabilized.
Secular history and geological evidence establish the first part of this age (2000 BC to 1000 BC) as undergoing numerous and widespread droughts, often lasting several years at a time. Scripture records the first famine in Abraham’s time, around 2000 BC. More droughts followed: “And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham.” (Gen. 26:1) Scripture records the great famine in Egypt during the time of Joseph when the spring and summer grain crops failed due to seven years’ drought. Yet there was no recorded shortage of wine or oil during this time. Because grapes and olives come to fruition at the end of long hot summers and require very little rainfall, summer droughts would not have substantially affected the production, and therefore the price, of wine and oil.
Natural catastrophes, desertification and changing weather patterns have ensured that famine remains a problem today. As improving diets in third world countries demand more meat production and cropland is converted to grow bio-fuel, global stockpiles of grain are rapidly diminishing. Once again, climate change is affecting the earth. Economic distress sends the price of food beyond the ability of people in poor nations to afford it. After the last large earthquake in Haiti, it came to light that due to the global increase in the cost of rice, many of its vast impoverished class regularly mix their meager food supply with dirt to make it last longer. These developments assure that famine, at one time alleviated by achievements in modern agriculture, will once again affect significant areas of the planet.
v. 7-8 When the Lamb broke the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come.” I looked and a pale-colored horse appeared. Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades came close behind him; and authority was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword or with famine or pestilence or by means of the wild beasts of the earth. Shortly after the Great Flood, men began to congregate in the great cities of Babylon and Nineveh. From this small start, other cities grew and power was consolidated over larger and larger areas by petty kings. The lust for power and wealth drove such men to expand their kingdoms through the power of the sword, the traditional symbol of the strong ruling over the weak. Thus, the violence that came to the fore in the second millennium became widespread during the fourth, organized by men claiming a divine right to rule.
The fourth millennium (1,000 BC to 1 BC) was characterized by the rise of great empires, as mighty kings moved vast armies across continents to establish ever-larger domains. It was an era of previously unknown misery as armies of tens, and then hundreds, of thousands marched across the land, stripping it of food and laying waste to entire cities. Great battles left destruction and disease in their wake, filling conquered territories with corpses. Because people fled before the invaders, few were left to bury the masses of dead. Fields and streams became polluted and diseases spread when local populations returned, while predatory animals multiplied to maintain the natural balance. The first recorded plague in the Bible, described in the fifth chapter of 1st Samuel, occurred at the beginning of this era.
Because Satan’s previous attempt to dominate the world had been so successful, God set a limit on the power of any one empire. The division of the earth and the confusion of languages after the Flood ensured that no more than approximately a quarter of the earth would be under the sway of any one empire at a given time. Competing kingdoms, motivated by opposing cultural and ideological beliefs, maintained a balance of power so no single empire would be able to rule the world.
The leaven of the fourth horseman continues to grow. Two thousand years after the end of the fourth millennium, national and multi-national conflicts still occur on a regular basis, despite a united world assembly devoted to peace. Satan still seeks to rule the entire planet, plotting his next move to bring the whole earth under his dominion. The economic and military pieces are even now being moved into place to establish a global kingdom under the control of the Dragon and his appointed rulers. The coming global economic crash will enable a transfer of power and better control of national and local populations, while the international conflicts that follow will set the stage for implementation of the one world government under the control of the beast of Revelation 13.
9-11 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw at the foot of (KJV – under) the altar the souls of those whose lives had been sacrificed because of the word of God and of the testimony which they had given. And now in loud voices they cried out, saying, “How long, O Sovereign Lord, the holy One and the true, dost Thou delay judgment and the taking of vengeance upon the inhabitants of the earth for our blood?” And there was given to each of them a long white robe, and they were bidden to wait patiently for a short time longer, until the full number of their fellow bondservants should also complete—namely of their brethren who were soon to be killed just as they had been.
A catch basin was built under the bronze altar in the temple to collect the blood that flowed from the sacrifices. The image of the souls under the altar testifies that they are martyrs, their blood sacrificed for the Gospel of the kingdom. Their prayer is for justice, that their deaths at the hand of the wicked will be recompensed when God settles accounts at the end of the age. The answer to their prayers will be seen in the coming seven bowl judgments of God.
The usual treatment of the fifth seal martyrs is to view them as somehow having less dramatic importance than the horsemen of the first four seals. No common thread is seen between them, since the horsemen are ‘the bad guys’ and the martyrs are ‘the good guys.’ Adam Clarke’s Commentary, for example, states of the fifth seal: “There is no... new event predicted; but the whole is intended to comfort the followers of God under their persecutions, and to encourage them to bear up under their distresses.” Quite the opposite is true. All the seals carry the same weight, each one revealing different manifestations of the leaven of sin through the ages. (The first and sixth vary slightly in that they show just the beginning of the first and the end of the sixth millennia.) The persecution of Christian martyrs is in fact a new event that started only after the crucifixion of Christ. The martyrs are just as significant as the horsemen, describing the major characteristic of an entire millennium. The fifth seal signifies the leaven of a great tribulation and persecution of the saints, which continues, like the leaven of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, to the end of the sixth age.
When the Dragon’s plan to discredit Jesus with a criminal’s death backfired, he turned to persecuting his followers in an attempt to stop the spread of the Gospel. However, instead of Jesus’ followers being silenced, they became world-class witnesses to the truth under the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. Persecution and tribulation became the prominent spiritual characteristic of the fifth age of man (AD 1 to 1000). The wholesale slaughter of believers by Roman Emperors is legendary, but these are by no means the only persecutions suffered by Christians during this millennium. The spread of Islam resulted in the conquest and subjugation of portions of several continents, resulting in much tribulation and the apostatizing of entire Christian communities. The persecution of God’s people, Christians and Jews, has continued through the sixth millennium, becoming more systematic and widespread as Christ’s return draws near.
v. 12-13 When the Lamb broke the sixth seal I looked, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as dark as sackcloth, and the whole disc of the moon became like blood. The stars in the sky also fell to the earth, as when a fig-tree, upon being shaken by a gale of wind, casts its unripe figs to the ground. The fall of man in the Garden of Eden had repercussions not just for mankind, but also for the earth itself, as Creation became subject to decay. (Rom. 8:19-22) Just as the opening of the first seal depicts events that occurred at the beginning of the first millennium, so the sixth seal shows events that mark the end of the sixth. The sixth seal reveals the unexpected consequences of Adam’s disobedience with signs in the heavens above that portend changes in the earth below.
Due to the spread of wickedness after the Fall, the Lord destroyed the earth with water in order to preserve his plan of redeeming mankind. The massive release of the waters above and under the earth resulted in fundamental changes to the ecosystem. Famine was not the only consequence of the Flood as the earth lost the vaporous water barrier that had protected it from cosmic radiation and allowed man to live for hundreds of years. The resulting division of the earth (Gen. 10:25) resulted in new stresses in the earth’s tectonic plates. Although the earth is in relative balance today, it is not as perfect as it was when it was created. The great earthquake and the rending of the atmosphere described in verses 12-14 are the end result of geologic forces set in motion by the Flood, an indirect result of the Fall.
While the geologic forces that will result in these final signs continued to build, the sixth age of man (AD 1000 to 2000) also brought an increase in the scope of sin and wickedness. The violence, famines, plagues, wars and persecution of the first five millennia grew in intensity and severity as the world’s population increased and the weapons of warfare became ever more advanced and deadly. Famine and disease grew more widespread and religious persecution intensified. Towards the end of the millennium, as the nations of the world moved towards the acquisition of global wealth and power, the planet has suffered potentially disastrous radiological, chemical, and biological pollution. At the end of the age, all of this leaven, from population pressures to famine, war, and plagues will come to its full expression at the end of the age.
The sixth millennium saw the warfare of the Crusades, the Ottoman invasions of Eastern Europe, continuing European wars, the Bubonic plague, the Inquisition, the violent subjugation of entire races to establish colonies, and both internecine and international wars that spanned continents and decades. In the twentieth century alone, tens of millions of people died through war, famine and disease, while martyrs for Christ numbered in the multiplied millions. The Twentieth Century hosted the 1918 flu at the end of World War I that killed 50 million people worldwide, with another 35 million military and civilian deaths occurring in World War II. Persecution under Nazi and Communist regimes took the lives of several million Jews and tens of millions of Christians. Conditions continue to deteriorate rather than improve as the Day of Christ draws near.
The sixth seal signs are not a new subject in Scripture, having been foretold by several Old Testament prophets. They are associated in numerous prophesies with the Day of the Lord and the salvation of Israel from her enemies. These signs are not the only ones to precede the return of Christ; they are just the last and most spectacular ones. They are the result of great terrestrial and cosmic forces that will overtake the earth just prior to the return of Christ.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke record Jesus’ warning of continuing persecutions, earthquakes, plagues, famines and wars that will precede the sixth seal signs. The earth has seldom in its long history recorded the great number of earthquakes, plagues, wars, volcanic eruptions, and widespread violence that exist today. To illustrate just the first of these, the number of recorded earthquakes has been rising dramatically. The average number of total earthquakes, both large and small, first exceeded 10,000 a year in 1984, according to the USGS. The annual number of all earthquakes between 1980 and 2007 went from 7348 to 29672, a 400% increase in 27 years. The media largely ignores the great increase in the number of quakes, and society seems to have become accustomed to hearing about them.
It appears that the USGS has its own take on this subject. This government agency answers the question of whether earthquakes are increasing by deflecting the public’s attention to the number of earthquakes over 7.0 magnitude, stating that these have remained constant since the beginning of the last century. However, USGS data shows that the total number of earthquakes is in fact increasing: The average number of quakes globally of all magnitudes, from 1980 to 1882 was 7,308; for the 1980s it was 10,667; for the 1990s the average was 19,678; from 2000 to 2007 the average was 28,213; for 2003 to 2007, it was 30,466.
v. 14 The sky too passed away, as if a scroll were being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. In the original Greek, the sky is not described as departing, but as being “rent,” as a fabric might be torn in two. This tearing is illustrated by the analogy of a scroll being rolled up. The description is consistent with what would occur with a sudden physical shifting of the earth’s poles. Viewed from space, one would see the earth’s crust moving, as the mantle broke free and rotated about its molten core. Geographic landmarks such as islands and mountains will be ‘removed from their places.’
Standing on earth, this event would look much different. One would have the impression that it was the stars that were moving rather than the earth. At the locations where the sun was rising or setting, the sky would appear as though it were actually being “rolled up,” as the stars were suddenly replaced with sunlight and vice versa. The last days’ geographic pole shift described in this verse was prophesied long ago as a sign of the Day of the Lord.
“Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. (Isa. 13:13) The floodgates of the heavens are opened, the foundations of the earth shake. The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth is thoroughly shaken. The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind; so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls (KJV – swoons) – never to rise again. (Isa. 24:18-20) Beware, the Lord will empty the earth, split it open and turn it upside down, and scatter its inhabitants.” Isa. 24:1 New English Bible
Luke records an additional natural effect that would precede the physical pole shift described in this passage, “the roaring and tossing of the sea.” The disturbance in earth’s gravitational field and the raising of earth’s core temperature that precedes a pole shift will result in severe storms and other noticeable events, as the physical pole shift is preceded by a magnetic one. Initial signs include changes in temperature, weather patterns, and ocean currents, melting icecaps, and rising ocean levels. Earth changes are becoming more noticeable. Alaskan islands are being inundated, mini tornadoes have been reported on both coasts of the United States, and hail the size of softballs has repeatedly fallen in Australia. Airports in the higher latitudes must repaint the numbers on runways every few years as the increasing magnetic polar shift results in changes to compass landing bearings. The earth will experience more super storms like the one that lashed Europe and North America in January 2007, causing 80 to 100 foot waves at sea.
“There will be signs in sun, moon, and stars; and on earth anguish among the nations in their bewilderment at the roaring of the sea and its billows; while men’s hearts are fainting for fear, and for anxious expectation of what is coming on the world. For the forces which control the heavens will be disordered and disturbed.” Luke 21:25-26
v. 15-17 The kings of the earth and the great men, the military chiefs, the wealthy and the powerful—all, whether slaves or free men—hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, while they called to the mountains and the rocks, saying, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the anger of the Lamb; for the day of His anger—that great day—has come, and who is able to stand?”
The desire to hide from judgment is the same reaction Adam and Eve had when God came looking for them in the garden after they had sinned. All men, regardless of social position, are in terror when catastrophic events strike the earth and changes become apparent in the order of the heavens. Scientists have told us that such cataclysmic events could never occur with such rapidity, but only come on a slow evolutionary scale. When mega-quakes rock the earth, man will lose faith in the belief that science will save him.
“Men will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from dread of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth.” Isa. 2:19 NIV
Revelation 6
Copyright 2011
