The Seed Of The Church.
When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been killed because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who live on the earth?” – REV 6:9-10. NASB.
What is happening here? When an individual brought a sacrifice for their sins to the Old Testament sanctuary, the lamb was slain, and its blood poured out at the base of the altar of sacrifice. Therefore, John portrays the martyrs who have died for Christ as symbolically crying out from under the alter to have their lives avenged, just like Abell’s blood “cried out from the dust” in Genesis 4:10 after his murder. They are not actual people under the altar. The word ‘soul’ in the Bible denotes the whole person (Gen 2:7). The martyrdom of God’s faithful and persecuted people is portrayed here in terms of the sacrificial blood poured out at the base of the earthly sanctuary’s alter (Exodus29:12, Lev 4:7). God’s people have suffered injustice and death for their faithfulness to Jesus. They cry out to God asking Him to step in and vindicate them. This text (seal) concerns the injustice done here on earth; it is not saying anything about the state of the dead. After all, these people do not appear to be enjoying the bliss of heaven.
The sacrificial language of this text suggests that the gospel will not be fully proclaimed to all nations (Matt 24:14) until Christians become radical enough to die for the sake of the unreached.
In the past, many mission fields were pried open only in the wake of a multitude of Christian martyrs. Today’s “difficult fields,” like the strongholds of Islam and Hinduism may only be penetrated with similar sacrifice.
In the late Nineteenth Century Hudson Taylor sought recruits to help in his mission to China. He claimed that he needed, “Men and women. . . such as will put Jesus, China, souls, first and foremost in everything and at every time even life itself must be secondary.” Such a commitment was bound to be tested over time. During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, responding to the insensitivity of many Westerners in China, 188 Protestant missionaries, and 30,000 Chinese Christians were slaughtered. Yet this slaughter led to three-fold church growth in the decade that followed.
It was Tertullian who said, “The death of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th Century German philosopher famous for the line “God is dead,” became a serious opponent of Christianity. He claimed that Christianity was a religion invented by the weaklings of the world to make themselves feel good about their unfortunate circumstances. By exalting humility, submission and poverty as virtues while condemning pride, power and wealth, the powerless in society could cast their condition in a positive light.
Nietzsche believed that this inversion of values was bad for individuals and for society. He ridiculed it as “the slave rebellion in morals.” He took offence at texts like the above that exalt the powerless and the victims of oppression. He had no use for “blessed are the meek,” or “turn the other cheek.” There was much more in the New Testament to offend him. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
Nietzsche scorned the entire Christian value system as a glorification of all that is weak and ineffective in life. And there is no easy answer to his objections, no simple way to prove that the Christian way of suffering and service are inherently superior to self-promotion and competition.
The Bible does make clear, however, that when God asks His followers to follow the way of humility and suffering, it is only because He Himself has already set the example. He requires these characteristics in His followers because they are characteristics that He Himself exemplifies.
In the person of Jesus, God demonstrates that He is “gentle and humble in heart “(Matt 11:29, NIV). Though he held the highest place in the universe, Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant (Phil 2:6-7, NIV).“Jesus not only became human, which would be humiliating enough, But He also submitted to unjust arrest and execution“(Phil 2:8).
In Rev 6:9-10 the souls under the altar recognize the injustice in their suffering. At the same time, they are following in the footsteps of the Lamb that was slain. The cross does not call us to do what is natural, it calls us to deny ourselves and follow Him, even unto death.