<p>6:17 <i>For the great day of their anger comes, and who is able to stand?-</i> The situation clearly refers to the last day. The Old Testament &lsquo;day of wrath&rsquo; is usually against Israel and her leaders; and these are in view here, the kings of the land. The Babylonian invasion was the day of wrath (Dt. 29:28; Jer. 32:31; 44:6; Lam. 1:12; 2:1.21.22; Zeph. 2:2,3). The same word translated &ldquo;wrath&rdquo; is used by the Lord in the Olivet Prophecy concerning how there shall be &ldquo;wrath upon this people&rdquo;. The people of Israel are therefore those who suffer under the sixth seal. &ldquo;The great day&rdquo; is Joel&rsquo;s &ldquo;great and notable day of the Lord&rdquo;, the second coming. Jude 6 uses the very expression in talking about &ldquo;the judgment of the great day&rdquo;, &ldquo;the great day of God Almighty&rdquo; of Rev. 16:14.</p><p>&quot;And who shall be able to stand?&quot; alludes to Mal. 3:1-3 concerning the coming of the latter day Elijah prophet to Israel: &ldquo;Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, behold, He comes says Yahweh of Armies. But who can endure the day of His coming? And <i>who will stand</i> when He appears? For He is like a refiner&rsquo;s fire, and like launderer&rsquo;s soap; and He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver&rdquo;. At the time of the sixth seal, Elijah (or the Elijah ministry) will be active in Israel amongst Jewish people. Those who do not respond to this ministry will be unable to stand before the Lord.</p><p><strong>Revelation 7: The 144,000</strong><br />The seals speak of the latter day outpouring of judgment and trouble upon the land and people of Israel, perhaps throughout the entire territory of the land promised to Abraham. God&rsquo;s judgments on His people are never simply the wrath of a powerful Deity; they are intended to elicit repentance. They are His appeal to men. After the seals, we read of the sealing of 144,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel. This could be all purely symbolic- 12 tribes multiplied by the 12 disciples, making 144, and thousands of them, speaking therefore of Jews who had come to Christ. But the laboured repetition of the &ldquo;12,000&rdquo; and the names of each tribe is striking. It may simply be that the Lord wishes to stress how every single one of those latter day believers is known to Him. Or it could be a literal number, and the ethnicity / tribal origins of the Jews is known to the Lord. But I somewhat doubt that kind of literalism is to found in Revelation or the entire apocalyptic genre. Perhaps there is a geographical reference- Jews from the entire extent of the land and tribal allotments of Israel.</p><p><strong>The Seals and Islam</strong><br />Reading through the seals is like reading parts of the Koran and Hadith which speak of the judgments which Islam wishes upon the Jews. This is not simply because the Koran is full of garbled allusions to the Old and New Testaments e.g. Sura 2.249 confuses several Bible stories: &ldquo;And when Saul set out with the army, he said: Lo Allah will try you by the ordeal of a river. Whosoever therefore drinketh thereof he is not of me, and whosoever tasteth it not he is of me, save him who taketh thereof in the hollow of his hand. But they drank thereof, all save a few of them. And after he had crossed the river, he and those who believed with him, they said: We have no power this day against Goliath and his hosts. But those who knew that they would meet Allah exclaimed: How many a little company hath overcome a mighty host by Allah's leave Allah is with the steadfast&rdquo;. The reality is that radical Islamists, in strict obedience to the Koran, will seek to bring these judgments upon the people and land of Israel because they think this is what the Koran tells them to do; and in so doing they will fulfil Revelation. For the kind of brutality they practice is only possible for a person who has been brainwashed with religious or political philosophy. That&rsquo;s why jihadist volunteers are firstly sent for weeks of &lsquo;teaching&rsquo; before being sent to fight. The kind of extreme, severe abuse of Israel which is required by the language of Revelation and Daniel 7 is such that it would require people fuelled by deep religious programing to execute it. The Quran often speaks of God&rsquo;s severity against the Jews because of their supposed sins against Mohammad and refusal to accept Islam, e.g. Sura 2.211: &ldquo;Ask of the Children of Israel how many a clear revelation we gave them He who altereth the grace of Allah after it hath come unto him for him, lo Allah is severe in punishment&rdquo;. This is the reasoning which will inspire the Moslems to abuse the Jews so intensely. &ldquo;Because of the wrongdoing of the Jews&hellip; we have prepared for those of them who disbelieve a painful doom&rdquo; (Sura 4.160,161). Unashamed aggression is taught by the Koran multiple times, e.g. Sura 9.123 &quot;O ye who believe Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you&quot;. &ldquo;Then seized I those who disbelieved, and how intense was my abhorrence&rdquo; (Sura 35.26). And so we could continue:</p><p>&quot;Fight (slay and kill) those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the last day (judgement day), nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor they follow the religion of truth (the religion of Islam) out of those who have been given the Book (Jews and Christians), until they pay the tax, in acknowledgment of superiority and (recognition that) they are in a state of subjection (to Islam)&quot; (Sura 9:29).<br />&quot;Worst among men in enmity to the believers (Muslims) wilt thou find the Jews and pagans&quot; (Sura 5:82).<br />&quot;O ye who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other, and he amongst you that turns to them for friendship is one of them Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust (Jews and Christians)&quot; (Sura 5:51).<br />&quot;Those who reject Islam among the people of the book (Jews and Christians) and among the polytheists (all other religions) will be in hell fire to dwell in there for ever and they are the worst of creatures&quot; (Sura 98:6).</p><p>Not only Revelation, but many other latter day prophecies are full of language strikingly similar to that found in the Koran. The jihadist Moslems seek to obey the Koran, and by doing so, they will be fulfilling Bible prophecy about the last days. For example, Joel 2:6 LXX speaks of how in the final day of the Lord, Israel will be invaded by a latter day Assyrian, &quot;a numerous and strong people&quot; (:2), and &quot;Before them shall the people of Israel be crushed: every face shall be as the blackness of a caldron (AV &quot;gather blackness&quot;)&quot;. The Koran in Sura 7.106 speaks of this happening at the last day, when Moslems will blacken the faces of those who refuse to convert to their religion: &quot;On the Day when some faces will be whitened and some faces will be blackened; and as for those whose faces have been blackened, it will be said unto them: Disbelieved ye after your profession of belief? Then taste the punishment for that ye disbelieved&quot;.</p><p>The punishments of the seals are the very punishments which the Koran says must be brought upon the Jews in order to make them repent and accept Islam and that Mohammed was a messenger to them: &quot;We shall test you with fear, hunger, loss of wealth, lives and fruits so that when afflicted with calamity they will say, Truly To Allah we belong and truly, to Him we shall return&quot; (Surah 2.155,156). These calamities will indeed cause a remnant to repent- but return to the God of Israel, rather than convert to Islam. Surah 4.160,161 and the Hadith expansions upon it speak of starving the Jews and torturing them, which is how I interpreted Rev. 6:5-8: &ldquo;Because of the wrongdoing of the Jews we forbade them good things which were before made lawful unto them, and because of their much hindering from Allah's way, and of their taking usury when they were forbidden it, and of their devouring people's wealth by false pretences, We have prepared for those of them who disbelieve a painful doom&rdquo;.</p><p>Sura 17, <em>Al-Isra</em>, is about future Moslem judgments upon &quot;The children of Israel&quot;. Sura 17.7,8 speaks of how latter day Moslems will repeat the historical judgments of the Jews upon them. This explains why some Jihadist groups see themselves as the revival of Babylon and Assyria: &quot;So, when the time for the second of the judgments came we roused against you others of our slaves to ravage you, and to enter the Temple even as they entered it the first time, and to lay waste all that they conquered with an utter wasting. It may be that your Lord will have mercy on you, but if ye repeat the crime we shall repeat the punishment, and we have appointed hell a dungeon for the disbelievers&quot;. The language of utter wasting and taking the temple mount is exactly that of latter day Bible prophecies about what is to happen to Israel in the last days. The Hadith and some Suras of the Koran are full of such language of what shall be done to the Jews and Israel: &quot;we annihilate it with complete annihilation... or punish it with dire punishment... There is not a township but we shall destroy it ere the Day of Resurrection, or punish it with dire punishment&quot; (Sura 17.16,58). And radical Islam is all set up to fulfil it. The same Sura continues to liken that final destruction of the Jews to a book of judgment being opened: &quot;We shall bring forth for him on the Day of Resurrection a book which he will find wide open. And it will be said unto him: Read thy Book&quot; (Sura 17.13,14). Likewise Sura 17.58: &quot;There is not a township but we shall destroy it ere the Day of Resurrection, or punish it with dire punishment. That is set forth in the Book of our decrees&rdquo;. This is the significance of the judgments upon Israel in the last days being likened to a scroll / book being opened.</p>