<p>6:9- see on Lk. 18:7; Dan. 5:23; Rom. 14:8,9.</p><p><i>And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those that had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held</i>- The fact the people are &lsquo;slain&rsquo; on the altar connects with our comment on &lsquo;death&rsquo; in 6:8. These are those slain by the Islamic militants for refusing to convert to their false religion. The allusion is to the blood at the base of the altar from the sacrifices, representing the blood or lives lived of the faithful who had been sacrificed. It is blood which is under the altar; the &quot;souls&quot; are represented by the blood. The witness of their lives, who they essentially were, cried out to God, just as Abel&rsquo;s blood cried out. Cain, his brother, becomes the prototype of Israel&rsquo;s latter day persecutors- it is their own half-brothers, their Arab neighbours, who slay them. The Hebrew for 'Cain' is the root of the word 'Canaan'. The persecutors of the faithful are Canaan- the inhabitants of Canaan, Israel's aggressive neighbours</p><p>In their death they as it were died with their Lord, the slain lamb (Rev. 5:6). The Greek suggests to be butchered, which is absolutely the behaviour of the jihadists to their victims. Note that those in view are not necessarily Western hostages, but those who are butchered for the sake of their witness to God's word. What we are seeing in the butchering of any who get in the way of the Islamic militants in the 'earth' / land promised to Abraham is a precursor of what can be expected on a wider scale, especially of true Christians witnessing to God's word.</p><p>The believer&rsquo;s death is a pouring out of blood on the altar (Phil. 2:17 Gk.), which is language highly appropriate to the Lord&rsquo;s death. It follows from this that the death of one in Christ is the pinnacle of their spiritual maturity, as the Lord&rsquo;s death was the pinnacle of His. It is a spiritual victory, more than the temporal domination of the flesh which it can appear.</p><p>Their preaching God's word was a <i>marturia</i>, a legal testament at court, and this was the basis of their martyrdom. The jihadists believe that all who refuse to accept their version of Islam must in some form come before an Islamic court, often presided over by themselves as both judge and prosecution, and then be legally butchered as a result. From their perspective, they are not guilty of wanton butchering; they claim they are doing it in fulfilment of Muslim legal requirements. The parallel is in Rev. 20:4: &ldquo;Them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God; and such as worshipped not the Beast nor his image and received not his mark&rdquo;. The &lsquo;slaying&rsquo; is particularly by beheading; and Islam is the only world religion today which legitimizes and practices beheading. And they are publicly doing it.</p><p>Seeing that there is no conscious survival of death, could this not refer to the guardian Angels of the former martyrs, crying out for the blood of their charges to be avenged? They are <i>so </i>closely identified with them that they can ask for &ldquo;our blood&rdquo; to be avenged. It&rsquo;s apparent enough that this is not the people themselves speaking- for they are dead. Surely then it refers to their Angels, who identify so strongly with them? Perhaps in the same way, Rev. 5:10 has guardian Angels thanking Jesus for making &ldquo;us&rdquo; king-priests to reign on earth. And when the believers are finally glorified, there is an ecstatic voice in Heaven, exalting that the Lamb&rsquo;s wife has made herself ready (Rev. 19:6). Surely this must refer to the Angels rejoicing that their charges have finally made it to salvation? We, for whom they laboured perhaps for centuries, preparing our genetic pool note how the Angels &ldquo;prepared&rdquo; Edom unto destruction long before it happened, Ez. 35:6), and the myriad of circumstances we would meet which were designed to bring us towards the Kingdom. No wonder they will be so ecstatic. Or in another figure, the blood of the dead believers cries out from under the altar, demanding vengeance on this world: on the Catholic, Protestant, Babylonian, Roman, Nazi, Soviet systems that slew them for their faith (Rev. 6:9). To God, their blood is a voice, just as real as the voice of Abel, which cried out (in a figure) for judgment against Cain (Gen. 4:10). After their death, those who had already died are spoken of as being given &ldquo;white robes&rdquo; and being told to rest a bit longer. Yet the white robe is given at baptism; a man may cast off Christ, but the prodigal is given again the robe if he returns (Lk. 15:22 s.w.); we are given white robes in this life through our acceptance of the blood of Christ and living in response to that redemption (Rev. 7:13,14; 22:14 Gk.). God giving believers white robes after their death can surely only be understood as His remembrance of how in their lives they had put on those robes. But His view of time is different, and He sees them as doing it again and again, as He considers how they had died for His cause and how thereby He will surely raise them. This is just as we would relive in our own minds the baptism of one of our children who has died. We know of course that there is no immortal soul, and that we personally feel nothing in death. But there is an immortal spirit, in that who we essentially are, our personality, lives on in the memory of a loving Father.</p>