Scripture · Revelation 20:11-15
Revelation 6:12-17
The Great Day of His Wrath
And I watched as the Lamb opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth of goat hair, and the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth like unripe figs dropping from a tree shaken by a great wind. The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the nobles, the commanders, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and free man hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. And they said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to withstand it?”
A city rides a tilting mass of rock toward a fiery abyss as mountains and buildings collapse in The Great Day of His Wrath.
About the artwork
Martin undermines the ground beneath the city. On the right, buildings cling to a great rock mass that is itself falling. The disaster reaches below walls and streets into the landscape supporting them, so the viewer searches in vain for a stable place within the composition.
This was one of three large paintings that Martin made of judgment and its aftermath, alongside The Last Judgement and The Plains of Heaven. After his death, the pictures toured public halls with explanatory lectures. Their audience encountered destruction beside a vision of paradise. The collapsing city is therefore one part of a larger story, whose range can disappear when this most terrifying scene is reproduced alone.
Featured in: Top 10 John Martin Paintings of Biblical Judgment, Explained
What does Revelation 6:12-17 mean?
Revelation 6:12–17 describes the opening of the sixth seal. Earthquake, darkened sun, altered moon and falling stars accompany the displacement of mountains and islands. People of every rank seek shelter among the rocks, asking to be hidden from the one on the throne and from the Lamb.
The passage explicitly includes rulers, the powerful, the enslaved and the free. Their ordinary distinctions provide no shelter from this event. Martin’s toppling city gives that loss of security a physical form: the places people might use as refuge are themselves moving into the catastrophe.
The phrase “wrath of the Lamb” is stranger than the falling mountains. In Revelation 5, this is the Lamb who was slain and whose blood purchases people for God. Just before the sixth seal, the murdered witnesses ask how long justice will be delayed. The terror therefore belongs to a vision concerned with suffering and judgment, not simply spectacular destruction. Martin makes the earth’s collapse visible; the surrounding chapters supply the wounded figure and the unanswered cries behind it.
The collapsing ground gives terrifying scale to Revelation’s vision in which mountains move and every rank of society seeks shelter.
Sources
Tate — The Great Day of His Wrath.
Revelation 6 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Revelation 6:12-17.
University of Bristol — The Last Judgement: an illustrated lecture at intervals. Research account by the creators of Tate’s 2011 sound-and-light presentation; identifies the three paintings and the nineteenth-century touring lectures it recreated.
Revelation 5 — Berean Standard Bible. The Lamb’s death and redemption in verses 6–10 provide context for the wrath of the Lamb in Revelation 6.
Also from Revelation:Christ the Almighty PantocratorSaint Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima
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