Fr. Stephen De Young: So now we’re going to read about what’s said cheruvim are doing.

Verse eight: “The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. They do not rest, day or night, saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’ ” That probably sounds familiar. [Laughter] This is not the first place it appears in the Bible either. This is based on what they’re singing in Isaiah’s vision. And the reason they’re covered with eyes—eyes are talking about the power of vision, the power of sight, an awareness of what’s going on on the earth. If these are the four cardinal points, they’re sort of over the whole earth.

Verse nine:

Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created.”

There’s sort of antiphonal worship going on between the cheruvim and the humans who are in God’s throne room, back and forth. Remember, right after St. John went through the door into heaven, he said he was in the spirit. He used that worship language, that he was entering into the worship. This is making a point that, when we enter into the worship of God—that includes us here in Lafayette, Louisiana, on a Sunday morning of whenever, we are joining the regularly scheduled worship of God already in progress, that’s going on in heaven, day and night continuously. We’re, like, plugging in. That’s true of everyone everywhere. We’re not only directly connected to what’s going on in heaven, meaning to God, to the angels—that’s why we mention angels so much in the Divine Liturgy, serving with us, worshiping with us—the saints, but that also means everyone else worshiping everywhere else in the world, connected through there. So every—especially the Divine Liturgy, but every worship service is a manifestation of the unity of the Church through time and space.

This is one of the reasons why— I know there’s a tradition among some of our people that after a loved one dies they don’t come to church for a while, and I’m sorry. That’s one of the silliest traditions I’ve ever heard in my life, because your loved one who passed away is here at the church, every time we’re worshiping. If you stay home, you’re staying away from your loved one whom you miss. It’s better you should be here where they are and worshiping God with them and praying for them and with them than at home, being depressed and sad. That’s the reality, because again, the purpose of this is St. John showing us the reality that we can’t see from our point of view here on the ground. This is part of that reality, that when he was worshiping in that cave next to a salt mine, when he and the other Christians could sneak off to go worship God, it wasn’t just them huddled in a cave with some candles and some lamps. They were part of this that’s going on in heaven. So it doesn’t matter if your church is the biggest cathedral in the world—they let us re-open the Hagia Sophia—or if it’s a storefront or somebody’s living room. This is what we’re connecting to and we become a part of.

Chapter five, verse one. So we’ve kind of got the scene set now. Now the action is going to start sort of unfolding. [Laughter] “And I saw on the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” You usually wouldn’t write on both sides of a scroll. That’s why he makes that point. You usually write on one side, and then you roll that up on the inside to protect the writing, but this is written on both sides, but it’s rolled up. And then these are like wax seals that you’d put on it to seal it, and you have to break them in order to open it so you can tell whether it’s been opened or not.

Verse two: “Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice: Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?” The scroll is sitting in the right hand of the One sitting on the throne. It’s sealed. The angel yells, “Who’s worthy to break the seals and open it?”

Verse three: “And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look at it.” So heaven, earth—under the earth means the underworld, Hades. You kind of figure none of them were going to be worthy, but I guess: thoroughness, you’ve got to check.

Verse four: “So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at it. But one of the elders said to me”—and it doesn’t say which one; I wonder if he was talking to himself—“Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.” So he weeps because no one can open the scroll and find out what’s in it. He gets told by this elder (maybe himself) that he should not weep because there’s this person, and this “Lion of the tribe of Judah”: reference back to Genesis, of the early prophecies of the Messiah: “Root of David,” obviously talking about the Messiah. And notice that he’s prevailed. So he’s accomplished this victory, and that’s now going to allow him to open the seals. It’s not just “Oh, he’s worthy in general,” but this is going to be the result of what he’s accomplished.

Verse six: “And I looked, and behold: in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures and in the midst of the elders stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” So he looks back over to the throne. Notice that it’s the same throne, so this figure, the Lamb there—and Christ is identified as the Lamb of God in St. John’s gospel, so he’s using the same symbolism—the Lamb is there on the throne where the One who sat on the throne, God, was.

Q1: This is in the midst of all of these. I pictured it being sort of in the…

Fr. Stephen: No, remember, they’re around the throne, so the Lamb is on the throne, in the midst of those.

Q1: Okay.

Q2: And my Bible says “between the throne and before the living creatures.” [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Right, and so the Lamb looks as if it’s been slain. This is both the Messiah and it’s God and he’s been slain. This is very obviously talking about Christ, having died and been resurrected. Christ after his resurrection, remember, still had the wounds of his resurrection, the marks of his victory.

Verse seven: “Then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. Now when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” All the people we saw worshiping before, now all are worshiping the Lamb, so we’ve got worship again, another thing that he’s God, that this is not someone that is other than God. And here the harps do show up, I admit, but they’re not being strummed, sitting on clouds.

Q1: There’s a lot of cartoons about that.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Yeah! And notice, they have golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Notice what St. John is saying here. There are prayers from people on earth that are coming up before Christ through these saints who are in heaven. Sometimes we get asked by some of our Protestant friends where the stuff about praying to saints or praying with saints or asking saints to pray for us is in the Bible. Well, here’s one place. The prayers of the saints are being offered before God by the saints in heaven.

You notice, there’s no— We’re given a picture here. There’s not like— This is not the product of a rational argument. You don’t have St. John saying, “Now, people, you can’t approach God directly” or “It’s okay to approach Jesus directly. You don’t have to go through the saints.” This is not like— We’re just presented this picture, because, remember, one of the themes we’ve got going on in the background here from chapter four that’s been established is this unity of the whole Church in prayer. We would expect, if we in worship are united with the heavenly worship, for us to be praying for them, them to be praying for us; we’re all praying for each other. We’re all connected; we’re all praying for each other.

So this isn’t a weird thing that we have to— “Well, why does this work? Why do we have to do it that way? How do we—?” Those questions don’t even really make sense with what we’re being presented here. They’re questions we might have; that doesn’t make them valid. [Laughter] But we might have them, but they’re questions that proceed from a way of thinking that is kind of foreign to what’s going on here in the Scriptures. It’s a way of thinking that says, “Well, you know, maybe that’s okay, but why do I have to do it?” Whereas St. John is painting us this beautiful picture of the unity of the Church. It’s like: “Well, but do I have to? I mean, like… not do that and just do the other.” That’s a whole different approach to worship and reality than what we have here.

So then verse nine: “And they sang a new song, saying: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” This is making abundantly clear how it is that there’s now the humans up there. They straight out say it: Christ redeemed them by his blood. And “redeemed” means exactly what “redeemed” sounds like, like when you redeem a coupon, when you redeem… [Laughter] It means you buy back.  And in this case it’s specifically buying out of slavery.

We tend to— As much as I wrote my dissertation about it, we tend to, when we think about Christ and his blood and his death, we tend to think about atonement and the Day of Atonement all of the time, but that’s not the way the Bible, the New Testament, usually talks about Christ’s death and resurrection. What usually talks about his death and resurrection is Passover. Exhibit A: Here he’s presented as a Lamb. You have goats at the Day of Atonement; you have a lamb at Passover.

Passover is very clearly— What happens at Passover? The people of God are freed from slavery. God renders judgment on the gods of Egypt and sets his people free from slavery; that’s what happens on Passover. And that’s how Christ’s death and resurrection is being presented here. That’s the redemption language. In this world, people were slaves, slaves to sin, slaves to death, slaves to the demonic powers. Christ came and died and rose again, and, through that, set them free, brought them into heaven, and they’re giving praise for that.

And notice: “every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” It’s not just about Israelites getting set free from Egypt and the Egyptian gods. It’s about the Egyptians getting set free from Egypt. It’s about the Romans getting set free from Egypt. It’s about the— Even the dreaded 19th-century Germans getting set free. [Laughter] It’s everyone.

Verse ten: “And have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth.” Remember, they were sitting in thrones already. So God is, or Christ is sharing his rule over the world; now that he’s taken rule over the world, now he’s sharing it with them, and so they’re now reigning with Christ. This is going to be important when we get to Revelation 20, because this is something that’s happening here.

Notice also they’re kings and what?

Q1: Priests.

Fr. Stephen: Priests. So what do priests do?

Q1: Make sacrifices.

Fr. Stephen: They offer sacrifices and?

Q1: Worship?

Fr. Stephen: Intercede with prayer. Priests in the Old Testament didn’t really do a lot of worship-leading. Well, they didn’t. Now we do, yeah. So they’re kings and priests. Now, these people, the saints in glory in heaven, are they offering sacrifices, like animal sacrifices?

Q1: No.

Fr. Stephen: No, okay. So what does that mean they’re doing? Praying and interceding. That’s the other thing that the priests do. So once again, this is very clearly saying here in Revelation: the saints in glory are praying and interceding for those on earth. This is what they’re doing. Our idea of sainthood in the Orthodox Church is here in the book of Revelation. I mean, it’s other places, too, but it’s pretty clear here in the book of Revelation.

Verse eleven: “Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.” That’s not a literal number. That’s how you say “gazillions” in Greek.

Saying with a loud voice: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, I heard saying: Blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.

A lot of those “under the earth and down in the abyss” probably were not happy about having to say that, but they still kind of had to say that. [Laughter]

“Then the four living creatures said Amen, and the 24 elders fell down and worshiped him who lives forever and ever.” Hm. Yeah, we’ve got to keep going. Okay, we’re going to get into chapter six. We’re going to get into the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Fun times, fun times.

As we move into chapter six, we’re going to see the seals start getting opened. So what’s going on with the scrolls and the seals? It’s connected to what we just saw. Christ has—because of his death and resurrection, he’s now taken possession of the earth. That’s why he can now redeem people from everywhere. He’s redeemed everybody; he now possesses them. This scroll is sort of like a deed, where he’s taken possession. Nobody else was worthy to do it; he does it through his death and resurrection, but now he has to crack those seven seals.

As he takes possession of the earth and Christ becomes the ruler of everything, what’s he going to do? So if you’ve got a kingdom that’s become corrupt and old, and now a good, righteous king has come in, what’s he going to do? He’s going to clean house. [Laughter] He’s going to put stuff back in order. There’s going to be a reckoning now. What we’re going to see now as we move through Revelation, we’re going to see a series of cycles. We talked back in 1 John about how, when St. John writes, he writes in this cyclical pattern. It’s one of the ways we know that the gospel and 1 John and Revelation were written by the same person is they’re all structured the same way, in this circular way. And so we’re going to see this series of sevens. There’s going to be seven seals, there’s going to be seven bowls, there’s going to be seven horns, and they’re going to cycle through.

What we’re seeing now, Christ taking possession of the earth, this is one of the things that’s playing out in history. St. John is seeing these broad patterns that are playing out in history, and he’s saying— So he’s going to see Christ open a seal, something’s going to happen, and the thing he describes happening, the idea is that we now, at our point here in the ground, see these things happening. Rather than seeing them, for example, and being afraid—not knowing what’s going on, despairing—we’re going to say, “Oh, this is a sign. Christ is taking back the world. It’s moving ahead. That’s why we’re seeing these things unfold.” So that’s sort of the overarching idea as we get into the seals.

So now we’ll get into them. Fun times with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Spoilers for a couple minutes from now: They’re ancient Canaanite gods. Okay. [Laughter]

Revelation 6:1: “Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder: Come and see.” There’s a place where Johnny Cash reads this, and he does it so much better than [I do]. [Laughter]

Q2: Yeah. The Man comes around.

Fr. Stephen: You didn’t have to agree with me about how much better he did it. [Laughter] I mean, acknowledge, fair, but still.

“And I looked, and behold: a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.” One of these patterns that unfolds in history is conquerors. If you’ve studied history at all, there’s a succession of those. But let’s pause here. So if you are of the mind that what Revelation is doing is it’s predicting a bunch of stuff that’s going to happen at the end of the world, and so you treat, for example, this: “Okay, a conqueror’s going to come. This is going to be one of the first signs, we’re going to see somebody going out and conquering,” and you live in basically any era of world history, you’re going to be able to find somebody. Like, right now, you could say, “Oh, look. Putin invaded Ukraine. This is it!” Or it could have been Hitler or Stalin, or it could have been Napoleon, or it could have been— [Laughter] Genghis Khan.

You can keep going back. You can always find somebody who will fit that. That’s why that whole approach doesn’t work, because the point is all of these are repeated things. Just like St. John said in 1 John when he talked about the antichrist, said, “You’ve heard an antichrist will come; already antichrists (plural) are popping up.” He talks about there being a sort of spirit of antichrist that’s at work in the world. And that culminates somewhere; there will be a time when Christ returns. It’ll be a culmination of all of these patterns, but the patterns play out, sort of over and over again. And so this first pattern is conquest.

Verse three: “When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying: Come and see. Another horse, fiery red, went out, and it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another, and there was given to him a great sword.” This is not necessarily conquest but just warfare. Again, any time in history, you can find plenty of examples. Unfortunately, there’s always war and slaughter and death going on.

Verse five:

When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say: Come and see. So I looked, and behold: a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying: A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine.

So this is like food shortage, like famine.

Q1: [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and so people— Famine, people dying of hunger. Notice the nuance, though, that the hunger is not so much caused by, like, crop failure, bad weather, lack of rain; it’s sort of human-cause famine, which most famine, historically and today, is. Right now… I don’t know right now. Right now, all our supply chains are all messed up, but before COVID, every year the earth produced enough food to feed ten billion people, and several million people starved to death every year, even though there’s only seven billion people in the world. So there are places on earth that wasted huge amounts of food and other places that didn’t have enough. And that’s something we do to ourselves. But that, again, is a perpetual thing.

Verse seven:

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying: Come and see. So I looked, and behold: a pale horse, and the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.

So Death is obviously death, and has Hades with him, sort of in tow. Hades, the idea here is— The way Hades is depicted in some of our iconography, where it’s sort of this big, gaping maw, like a serpent— So the idea here is that Death is sort of running around, feeding people to Hades, feeding people to the grave. Obviously, death has been going on.

Now, I mentioned that the four horsemen here are ancient Canaanite gods, and they actually are. That’s where the depictions come from. They’re referred to at several places in the Old Testament. They pop up in different places. They pop up in the psalms. A lot of times it’s hard to tell in the English translations because they won’t translate their names as names. We pray, for example, that we be delivered “from the arrow that flieth by day” in the prayers of the sixth hour. The “arrow that flieth by day” is actually a reference to Resheph, which is one of these ancient Canaanite gods, who shot sort of poisonous plague arrows at people. There’s an early form of Apollo that’s based on him, too.

But so, to get into who these guys are in the Canaanite gods, you have to start at the end—hat’s why I waited till the end to do this—because in the Canaanite stories, these are all guys who work for Mot, the god of death. Mot was the god of death. That’s where the Arabic word for death comes from; it’s the same word, the same root! [Laughter] There were no temples, by the way, to Mot. You didn’t, like, worship the god of death. You tried to get rid of him and keep him away. But Mot sort of had these lackeys whom he sent out to sort of get people for him, one of whom was Resheph, one of whom was— And they were related to plague and famine and “the sword,” which was violent death.

There are several places in the Old Testament where you see “the sword” referred to, and that’s not a metaphor. When David is told that because of what he did with Bathsheba, “the sword” will never depart from his house, that’s talking about what they believe to be a demonic spirit that brought about violent death. There are also prayers in the Orthodox Church where we pray to be delivered from, among other things, “the sword.” Obviously, that’s not literally, like: “I just don’t want any stab wounds. Guns are fine, but no swords.” It’s talking about that same thing: violent death.

In the Old Testament, in the Prophets, for example, where these figures are referred to and where Mot is referred to, the story’s kind of inverted. So when you read the Canaanite stories, Mot is the god of death, is nearly all-powerful for them, because everything dies from their perspective. They even thought their gods could die, which means Mot’s kind of the most powerful one, because everyone and everything dies: he always wins, ultimately. So you get a very sort of dark, bleak— Most Ancient Near Eastern religions are pretty dark! [Laughter] There’s not a lot of hope and fun times ahead in the afterlife for you. [Laughter]

But what happens is that there are, of course, various places where— That depict Yahweh the God of Israel sort of threatening Mot, a lot of things that are leading into a lot of our hymnography surrounding Pascha, of death being defeated by Christ. But there are also these passages dealing with Mot and with these lackeys of his that talk about God having them, like on a leash, or God forcing them to serve him. These will give people fits, if you come at it from a certain perspective, because a lot of people come at this from the perspective of “Wait, this is saying God, like, sends demons at people? That doesn’t sound good. That doesn’t sound right.” [Laughter] But there is— The perspective of the Old Testament, that St. John’s really picking up here—that’s why he’s using the same imagery—is that God allows these things—he allows demons to be active in the world; he allows these things—for the purpose of bringing people to repentance. But he has them on a leash, meaning they’re under control.

We can even kind of see this with Satan in Job. Satan comes, and he can talk trash about Job to God, but if he wants to do anything to Job, he has to get God’s permission. That’s the idea. They, of course—the demons don’t want to do good. They don’t want us to repent. They hate us and want to destroy us, but God sort of uses them to accomplish his will anyway. Just like the ones under the earth couldn’t avoid ultimately giving praise to God, they can’t avoid ultimately serving his ends, even when they’re trying to be hateful and destructive.

So St. John is bringing these guys back to say two things. One is that we’re going to see these patterns, and the people whom St. John originally wrote these to could see these patterns, living at the end of the first, beginning of the second century in the Roman Empire. They could see all of these things happening around them. We can see all these things happening around us. And St. John is saying: When you see these things, you should know that this is in progress. Christ is taking the world back and setting things right, number one. But, number two, we should also know that these things are being used—these events are being allowed and being used by God to bring people to repentance, to bring them back to Christ, before Christ returned, before the end, because there is going to be an end, and that’s also going to— That’s going to mark the end of our suffering, that’s going to mark the end of our troubles, the end of our trials, but it’s also going to represent the end of our opportunity to repent. So there’s always a balance there.

Remember, this is why St. Peter said Christ was delaying returning, to allow time for repentance. But there will come a time when the balance moves in the other direction, and then Christ will return. So it’s not that during the time between Christ’s ascension and his second coming, he’s just waiting around or he doesn’t know what’s happening to us or he doesn’t know what we’re suffering or he doesn’t know what’s going on in the world. He knows. He’s allowing it, he’s using it, and this is the purpose. So these are sort of the level two things that St. John is trying to convey to us here, by using this Old Testament imagery.

Verse nine: “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.” These are the martyrs. Notice there, it sounds weird there, “under the altar,” like they’re in a hole.

Q1: Do we know what the altar is?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] They haven’t said, but we’re in this worship scene, so there has to be this altar, presumably referring to an altar of incense, because we had the bowls of incense, remember, so incense is being offered, rather than animals.

In the Old Testament sacrifices, remember, they weren’t allowed to drink the blood, do any of the other pagan stuff with the blood. What they were told to do with the blood, to stop them from doing that, is that after they killed the animal, they drained the blood into a bowl. So then the animal could be taken and butchered and prepared to be sacrificed. The blood was taken and poured out at the base of the altar, into the ground. The blood, remember, is the life. So the reason the souls, the lives, of the martyrs are under the altar is it’s representing their blood, the blood they shed for Christ, as a sacrifice, that they essentially offered themselves as a sacrifice to God when they were martyred.

Verse ten: “And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” So this is reinforcing that theme we were just talking about. The martyrs are just like, “Hey, how about—?” Because not only did they suffer this, but they’re still getting joined by other people. They said, “Lord, how long are you going to let this go on? How long will this continue?”

Verse eleven: “Then a white robe was given to each of them, and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed as they were was completed.” So there is going to come a time when there is going to be this reckoning, but not yet.

Verse twelve: “I looked when he opened the sixth seal, and behold: there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, of hair, and the moon became like blood.” That’s not good. [Laughter] So if the sun becomes black and the moon— And this is not talking about the blood moon—sorry, John Hagge—happens all the time; not a big deal. We’ll keep going.

Verse 13: “And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.” That’s a vivid description!

Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks: Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come, and who is able to stand?

So we get to seal six. This is now the cusp of Christ’s return. What’s all this business about—? Now, we want to read this very literally, the sun, moon, and stars. What do the sun, moon, and stars [mean] everywhere else in Scripture, including the first part of the book of Revelation we read? These are angels, right? These are angelic beings. And one of the things we kind of forget is that, for example, in Isaiah, when it talks about the day of the Lord, the day of Yahweh, God coming to judge the earth, he says, “On that day, I will judge those in the heavens in the heavens, and those on the earth on the earth.” There’s angels getting judged, too. We’ve got John Milton in our heads, so we think that some time, way, way back in the long-ago time, a bunch of angels fell—

Q1: Like figs.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, went somewhere, and the rest of the angels stayed up in heaven, and so that’s already kind of done. But that’s not in the Scriptures and that’s not in the Fathers. And John Milton’s a Puritan, so you can’t believe him about anything. [Laughter] He’s liable to come kill your king. You don’t even know what’s going to happen.

For example, you read St. Gregory the Dialogist, aka St. Gregory the Great, so end of the sixth century, late antiquity. He wrote a work called the Miralia, which is a commentary on the book of Job. He says—and talks about the angels gathering to present themselves before God on his right hand and on his left hand. He says those on his right hand are the elect angels; those on his left hand are the evil angels. That sort of winnowing and judgment hasn’t happened yet, and so what’s being depicted here under the sixth seal is that two-part judgment: it starts in heaven. God judges heaven first, wraps it up, judges the sinful angelic beings, who get dropped like figs, then turns to the earth. And when he turns to the earth, all the people on earth are like: “Uh-oh! We done messed up now!” [Laughter] Because they haven’t taken advantage of this life for repentance, and now that time is at its end, and so they’re trying to hide, to get the mountains to fall on them and hide them. [Laughter] Not going to work. So that’s what’s being depicted here, is that same movement from Isaiah. This is now happening, sixth seal at the end.

Now, as I mentioned, Revelation is a series of cycles. What’s going to be interesting is that none of these cycles are going to— Well, not none. Almost none of these cycles are going to end. So we’ve just got six seals, so you might be expecting— I don’t think we’re going to start chapter seven—we’re not—but you may be expecting: Okay, so now when we come back next time and we get into chapter seven, he’s going to open the seventh seal, right? You can glance ahead.

Q2: Ah, no, he’s not.

Fr. Stephen: No. [Laughter] No, not yet. So something will happen with the seventh seal, but what’s going to happen with the seventh seal is it’s going to start the next series of seven things. [Laughter] The seventh seal is going to be the first part of the next deal. But we’ll end here for now, time wise. We actually did three chapters!

Q2: [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: I must have had more caffeine than I should have! [Laughter] They’re also kind of short chapters. Thank you, everybody.