03.02 Second Division. Opening of the Seven Seals

Second Division. Opening of the Seven Seals

Chapters 6-8:5 The Lamb, invested with all the authority to execute judgment, having received His commission from God, begins now to open the seals of the book which is in His hands, the hands which were once nailed to the cross. It is evident that the breaking of the seas does not come till His Saints are gathered around the throne in glory. As long as this has not been it still the day of Grace. Read Isaiah 61:1-2 and compare with Luke 4:18-19. When He read from the book in the synagogue of Nazareth, He stopped with the sentence “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He did not read “and the day of vengeance of our God.” When the Saints are gathered home, when the true Church is received into glory, the acceptable year of the Lord ends. The door will be shut as far as the nations of Christendom are concerned and the day of vengeance will be executed. In Matthew 24 in the great prophetic Olivet Discourse, our Lord speaks of the ending of the age. Strictly speaking it is the end of the interrupted Jewish age, the final seven years of the prophecy in Daniel (Chapter 9). The first things which our Lord mentions is, what He calls, “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8). And the seal judgments are the beginning of sorrows. Let us look at the startling agreement.

Chapter 6.

1. The First Seal. The White Horse: the Conquering Rider.Revelation 6:1-2. When the first seal is opened one of the living creatures said in voice of thunder: “Come.” The words “and see” must be omitted here and in verses 3, 5, and 7. A rider upon a white horse appears; his is a bloodless conquest. He has a bow, but no arrow. He receives a crown and goes forth to conquer. Many expositors make this rider the Lord Jesus or some power which represents Him. It is positively incorrect. The Lord is indeed pictured as a rider upon a white horse, but when He comes it will be at the close of the judgment and tribulation period and His victorious conquest will be far different from the rider seen under the first seal. Read carefully Psalms 45:1-5; Zechariah 9:9-14; Revelation 21:11, etc., also the Apocalypse of Zechariah, especially Chapters 1-2. The rider here is a great counterfeit leader, not the personal Anti-Christ, but the little horn which Daniel saw coming out of the ten-horned beast (Daniel 7). We are writing in the most solemn and ominous times the world has ever known. All Europe is on fire. Many are the voices which are calling for a great European confederacy and for some great leader, another Napoleon. The blinded world looks for such a one and expects that he will bring peace and order into the prevailing chaos. And the Lord will permit such a one to come, deceiving the world so that they will say “peace and safety” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3). This coming leader of the revived Roman Empire will go forth to conquer and become its political head. He is Satan’s man as we shall see later. No human being knows how long God, in His infinite patience, may still delay the beginning of all these things. But as far as mortal eyes can see, enlightened by His Word and Spirit, these things are at hand and the outcome of the European war may be this confederacy and the rider upon the white horse will begin his conquest. And if so, how near, how very near, the home-gathering of the Saints must be. And this is the first thing our Lord mentions in the Olivet Discourse, to take place as the age ends, false Christ’s, deceivers (Matthew 24:4-5).

2. The Second Seal. The Red Horse. The Rider With the Great Sword.Revelation 6:3-4. The second seal reveals a rider upon a red horse. He takes away the false peace, which the rider upon the white horse as a divine judgment act established. The universal peace of which the world dreams without the presence of the Prince of Peace, will be of a short duration. Another awful war follows. It will not be war alone between nation and nation, but it will be a worldwide reign of terror and bloodshed, a carnage unknown before in the history of the world. Not a few believe that the present war is the second seal. But this is not correct because the true Church is still here. Something far worse is in store for the earth. Even keen observers in the world say that this will not be the last war the world will see. Blessed be His Name! that we His people will escape these coming judgments. See in Matthew 24 how our Lord mentions the great conflict of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

3. The Third Seal. The Black Horse. The Rider With the Balance.Revelation 6:5-6. The black horse rider brings famine. Exactly what our Lord mentions next: “there shall be famines.” Famine always follows a war and inasmuch as the second seal brings the greatest war, the third seal will bring the greatest famine. The judgments of God are then on the earth. It has been estimated that a denarius (wrongly translated penny) was about one dollar and a half in our money, and a measure of wheat, a “choenix” about one of our quarts. A quart of wheat for a dollar and a half. Starvation will come then for countless thousands. The rich seem to escape a part of this judgment for the oil and the wine, the luxuries of the well to do, are not to be hurt. They will receive their share of judgment later. And our Lord also speaks of famines in Matthew 24 :

4. The Fourth Seal. The Pale Horse. The Rider Followed by Hades.Revelation 6:7-8. The next rider under the fourth seal is named; his name is death. And Hades, the region of the unseen, (not hell) is populated. Sword, hunger, death, that is pestilences and the beasts of the earth, claim an awful harvest (Ezekiel 14:21). And so our Lord spoke of “pestilences.” These four seal judgments are hardening judgments. The Christless masses of Christendom will not recognize the hand of God in these awful visitations. It is different in the present war of Europe because the testimony of the Gospel is still given, backed by the prayers of God’s people. But after the true Church is gone and the Lord has spued out Laodicea these judgments will only harden their hearts.

5. The Fifth Seal. The Cry of the Souls Under the Altar.Revelation 6:9-11. The four living Creatures had uttered their fourfold “Come.” They are thus seen in connection with the providential government of the world. Under the fifth seal the scene changeth completely. John saw under the altar the souls of them that had been slain. And they cry, “How long, O Lord!” Who are they? Not the martyrs of past ages. They were raised up and are in glory with redeemed bodies. Here the words of our Lord in the Olivet Discourse give us the key. Speaking to His Jewish disciples He said: “Then shall they deliver you up, and shall kill you and ye shall be hated of all nations for my Name’s sake” (Matthew 24:9). The Lord speaks of another company of Jewish disciples who will bear a witness during the end of the age, after the rapture of the Church. He will not leave Himself without a witness. He calls a remnant of His people Israel and they bear a witness to the coming of the Messiah, their coming deliverer and King. Many of them suffer martyrdom. Their cry, “How long?” is the well known prayer of Jewish saints; and their prayer to have their blood avenged is equally a Jewish prayer. Christians are not supplicating for vengeance on their foes. The prayer for vengeance refers us to the imprecatory psalms prewritten by the Holy Spirit in anticipation of the final persecution of Jewish believers. And the fellow servants and their brethren who are yet to be killed (verse 11) are the martyrs of that remnant during the final three and one-half years, which is the great tribulation. See them mentioned in Revelation 20:4. Notice the two classes there which we find here under the fifth seal. The Saints whom Daniel mentions (Daniel 7:27) who receive the Kingdom are these Jewish Saints. The Saints of the Most High as mentioned by Daniel are not the church-saints.

6. The Sixth Seal. The Shaking of all Things. The Anticipation of the End.Revelation 6:12-17. Are the things mentioned under this seal to be taken in a literal sense or symbolically? Most of it is symbolical, yet at the same time great physical phenomena are also involved. The earthquake possibly means a literal earthquake. “Earthquakes in diverse places” our Lord predicted. And they increase as the age draws to its close. But the language is symbolical. Everything is being shaken in this poor world. The civil and governmental powers on earth all go to pieces; every class from kings to slaves are affected by it and terrorized. The political and ecclesiastical world is going to pieces. See the list of symbolical names and their meaning at the close of this volume. And when these shaking times have come, when thrones fall and anarchy reigns, when the great collapse of civilization and human society has come with signs on earth and in heaven, the earth-dwellers will see in anticipation the approaching day of wrath. Terror fills every breast and those who sneered at prayer, as the Christ rejecters do now, will gather for a prayer-meeting to appeal to the rocks to cover them. Read the following Old Testament passages in connection with this seal. Isaiah 34:2-4; Joel 2:30-31; Zephaniah 1; Haggai 2:6-7.