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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
A threefold interpretation is given relating to this sixth seal, and the opening of it.
1. Some apply it altogether to the Jews, and that their destruction in Judea and at Jerusalem was so dismal, that it was represented to St. John as the darkening of the sun, and the moon looking like blood, and the stars falling, such calamities impending as if heaven and earth were dissolving: doubtless at and before the destruction of Jerusalem there was a confluence of such calamities, so dismal, and so dreadful, as can very difficultly be represented or described.
2. Others apply it to the overthrow of Paganism, and the destruction of the Heathen emperors; the fall of Paganism, by means of Constantines's conversion to the Christian faith, was the most terrible judgment that ever fell upon the devil's kingdom: and accordingly, by the earth's quaking, the sun's becoming black, the moon's becoming blood, and the stars falling from heaven to earth, is to be understood the great changes that were made in the Roman empire, by overturning the whole Pagan state, and making Christianity the religion of the greatest part of the world; so that the sense of the foregoing expression is metaphorical, and signifies a great and general alteration of the face of affairs, as if the world was to be another thing.
But, 3. There are that interpret all this of the great and horrible confusion of the Christian world under Antichrist, when Christ the Sun of righteousness began to be obscured, that is, his doctrine concerning his offices and benefits darkened; the moon or church turned into blood; the stars or pastors fallen from heavenly offices; the scriptures, like the heavens rolled up, forbidden to be read; the mountains, kings and princes, in jeopardy; and the islands brought under Antichrist's yoke and tyranny.
Lastly, Some apply all this to the last dissolution of the world, and the final judgment of the great day; according to what follows in the three next verses.