Unfulfilled Revelation › Seals

Sixth Seal: Cosmic Disturbance

Great earthquake; sun black as sackcloth; moon like blood; stars fall; sky rolls back; mountains and islands moved. Kings hide and cry to be covered.

Key Hebrew Terms

שֶׁמֶשׁ (shemesh, H8121); יָרֵחַ (yareach, H3394); כּוֹכָב (kokav, H3556); רָעַשׁ (raash, H7493)

Key Greek Terms

σεισμὸς (seismos, G4578); ἥλιος (helios, G2246); σελήνη (selene, G4582); ἀστήρ (aster, G792)

Linked Verses (8)

Joel 2:31 source
KJV

The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.

Matthew 24:29 source
KJV

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

KJV

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

KJV

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

KJV

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

KJV

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

KJV

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

KJV

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Church Fathers

Tertullian (On the Resurrection 22) reads the sixth seal's cosmic disturbances as the literal signs preceding the return of Christ, in line with Joel 2:30-31 and Matthew 24:29. Victorinus of Pettau (Commentary on the Apocalypse on Rev. 6) reads them as the final destruction of the pagan order. Augustine (City of God XX.24) emphasizes the figurative connection to the shaking of all political and religious structures at the end of the age.