SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH’S ERRORNEOUS VIEW ON THE SIXTH SEAL

Reviewing the Existing Traditional Theologies on the Sixth Seal

Traditional Protestant church teachings on the sixth seal, unfortunately, are false interpretations of this prophecy, and open the church up to Satan’s deception and to yet another bitter disappointment. There are two major traditional teachings on the sixth seal. One belongs to the Seventh–day Adventist church. The other teaching belongs to the rest of the Protestant churches.

Seventh–day Adventist Church Traditional Teaching on the sixth seal

The church presently teaches that a majority of the sixth seal has been fulfilled, leaving only a later, last, part that will fulfill at the second appearing of Jesus. This part, which begins with the rolling back of the heavens as a scroll(Revelation 6:14-17), is in fact seen as the very scene and event of Jesus’s second coming. Expectedly, the church equates this last section of the sixth seal to Jesus’s Matthew 24 prophetic description of the signs of his second coming, as well as to the event of theseventh plague(Revelation 16:17.

 In his Matthew 24 prophecy, Jesus declares:

“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: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” –Matthew 24: 29–30 (emphasis mine)

And regarding the seventh of the seven last plagues, we read:

“And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great”–Revelation 16:17–21.

According to the church’s traditional teachings, the tribulation Jesus mentioned above is the medieval–papal (“Dark Ages”) persecutions of heretics which ended about AD 1798, when the pope was imprisoned by French General, Berthier. So, the fulfillment of the sixth seal is seen as those series of events that began a few years before AD 1798, and ended with the meteor showers of AD 1833. The church has these series of events identified and listed as follows:

Lisbon earthquake: this is supposed to have occurred on November 1, 1755

Unnatural darkness (darkening of the sun): this is supposed to have occurred on May 19, 1780

Unnatural darkness (moon became as blood): this is supposed to have occurred on May 19, 1780, also.

Meteor showers: this is supposed to have occurred on November 13, 1833.

Interestingly, the rest of the sixth seal, the later part(Revelation 6:14-17), is interpreted to be fulfilled in future when Jesus comes, and reads:

“And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. [15] 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; [16] 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: [17] For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

Since there are a total of only seven seals to be opened, what this means is that this latter part of the sixth seal is pushed into the seventh seal period, more specifically, to the seventh plague, where islands and mountains are also mentioned. Thus, traditional Seventh–day Adventists church teaching equates this last part of the sixth seal to the seventh plague events, especially since mountains and islands are equally mentioned under the seventh plague. The explanation offered is that the reason the last part of the sixth seal was not fulfilled, and Jesus did not come in the nineteenth century (October 22, 1844) is because God saw that the church was not ready. This is usually a convenient explanation for a failed prediction based on false prophetic interpretation. But as we will discover, this understanding and interpretations by the church has numerous problems and insurmountable difficulties, one of which is that God is all knowing and has appointed times for all His planned events and would still have come on that day had it been the day He had appointed for His son to come. The right reason Christ did not come is simply because, as this blog reveals, those events were not the sixth seal events in the first place. But secondly, the whole sixth seal events, including the last part, are not the scenes of the second coming, because the second coming belongs to the seventh seal, and specifically the seventh trumpet.

The readers need to know how the church came to this interpretation about the sixth seal. The background is the Millerite Advent Awakening that began in AD 1833, which had the second coming of Christ as October 22, 1844, just eleven years removed. Since they knew that this is a short time, and too short to allow the reemergence of Papal persecutions, they were forced to falsely conclude that Christ’s Matthew 24 “tribulations of those days” cannot therefore be in the future. They then decided that Christ must be talking about the Papal Rome tribulation of the medieval dark ages, since there are no other options left them for interpreting the “tribulations of those days”. Based on this conclusion, they searched history for the fulfillment of the signs Christ delineated in Matthew 24, “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”. Without much scripture search to corroborate, the movement decided that these signs were fulfilled in the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755, Unnatural darkness (darkening of the sun and the moon) of May 19, 1780, and the Meteor showers of November 13, 1833.

It is important that the reader realizes that this traditional interpretation of the sixth seal was exclusively based on the belief that Jesus was coming on October 22, 1844. It was a Millerite movement era theology, which Seventh-day Adventist church eventually borrowed, and which she has not bothered to review and correct, unfortunately. In the sixth seal series that will be presented in this site, the reader will discover what the sixth seal actually is, and why it is urgent that the church knows the message God’s is sending to her.

Next, we will examine all the faults and problems of the church’s present traditional view on the sixth seal.