8. For the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand--6:17. As the previous verse is a direct quotation from Hosea, this last verse of the sixth seal is an allusion, if not a quotation, of Nahum 1:5-6 : “ The mountains quake at him, the earth burned at his presence . . . who can stand before his indignation? Who can abide his fierce anger? His fury is poured out . . . the rocks are thrown down by him.” The Revelation passages are connected by quotation and the meaning is evident. The appeal of the great and mighty was for covert from the face of Him that sat on the throne and from the Lamb who was in the midst of the throne, which means that both God and Christ joined in the events of visitation in this pageant of retributive judgment on the nations. It places the passage where it belongs, not to the final judgment nor to a future procession of events, but to the period of the struggle and triumph of the early church with and over the Jewish and Roman persecutors of the apostolic and post-apostolic period.