The Sun Scorched the People with Fire

Nero's Burning of Rome

In the Apocalypse of Saint John, also known as the Bible Book of Revelation, there are seven seals, event trumpets, and seven bowls of wrath. These are related to each other and signify different parts of the Jewish War that led to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70. The fourth seal relates to the actions of the Emperor Nero. Let’s read the text:

The Fourth Seal

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, 'Come!' I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by the sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

The Fourth Trumpet

The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. The third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night. As I watched I heard and eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: 'Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!'

The Fourth Bowl of Wrath

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch the people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify Him.

The fourth seal is the crux of the judgment from which the three woes flow. God struck the Emperor, Nero, with insanity. The emperor was worshiped as the sun, and as the sun he scorched the people of both Rome and Judea with the fire of his insane wrath during the last three and a half years of his reign.

It is notable also that this seal dooms those under its judgment to be killed by the sword, plagues, and wild beasts. Recall that Paul said he had to fight wild beasts in the amphitheater, and apparently this was a common death sentence and entertainment to the Romans. Now God would turn their own cruel torment of the Christians back upon their heads. The opening act of Nero's insanity was literally to order his men to torch the city of Rome with fire in A.D. 64, beginning the persecution of the Christians.

Thus we find the most literal fulfillment of this prophecy in that Nero, the emperor worshipped as the sun, struck his own people with fire as recorded by Seutonius:

But [Nero] showed no greater mercy to the people or the walls of his capital. When someone in a general conversation said:

"When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,"

he rejoined "Nay, rather while I live," and his action was wholly in accord.

For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands, while some granaries near the Golden House, whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone.

For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity.

Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in "the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole of the "Sack of Ilium," in his regular stage costume.

Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of individuals.

Some modern historians deny that Nero was the one who burned Rome. But his burning of Rome was a direct fulfillment of the fourth bowl of wrath.

In the three years that followed the torching of Rome Nero killed so many Roman senators and patricians that Tacitus claimed the nobility of Rome was nearly extinguished altogether.

Suetonius records that one of Nero’s favorite ways to kill people was to feed them alive to his pet “monster” that he had obtained from Egypt. Given the Romans knew what crocodiles were, this must have been something else. It is unclear whether this monster was a deformed human or a wild beast. But the Emperor certainly fulfilled this prophecy as he smote the people of Rome, high and low in his murderous lust for blood.

The force of the fourth seal, trumpet, and bowl is that God is pouring out His wrath on the rulers of Rome and Jerusalem so that a third of them will be slain. They are given power over one-fourth of the Earth. The Roman Empire covered about one-fourth of the Earth.

Nero's madness and eventual suicide destabilized the office of the Emperor, leading to seven years of civil war, assassinations and plagues (which often accompany war due to lice and fleas in the armies, and the loss of clean water and sewage disposal in besieged cities).