But, in reading the first four seals, the student of this prophecy must have been struck by the symbolization of which the war-horse is the root. What does this sign import? What use does the Spirit of Christ make of the horse in prophecy ? What does He signify by it, and what did he intend it to signify when he exhibited it before John, now
white, then red, black, and pale?
In Isa. 63:13, the Spirit says, that Yahweh led the whole tribes of Israel “as a horse in the wilderness that they should not stumble.” This use of the animal is making it the symbol of a nation, or people.
Again, in Zech. 10:3, the Spirit saith, “Yahweh Tz’vaoth hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle.” Thus, when Messiah comes he will ride Judah as his war-horse. From these instances, then, it is scriptural to say that the Spirit in prophecy sometimes represent a people by a horse.
Now it is also scriptural to say that where He finds people representing themselves by animals, he adopts their symbols, and speaks of them by their own signs. Thus, the Persians represented their nation by a Ram; the Macedonians theirs by a Goat; the Romans theirs by a Horse, a Dragon, an Eagle; and the Franks their people by Frogs. The Spirit of Christ that was in the prophets has appropriated all these in speaking prophetically of each. The Ram-people and the Goat- people are largely treated of in Daniel; and the Horse-people, Dragon people, Eagle-people, or Greco-Latin, or Roman people; and Frog- people, figure conspicuously in the apocalypse.
There can be no reasonable doubt of the Roman people having symbolized themselves by a war-horse. This is clearly shown by the Rev. E. B. Elliott, A.M., in his work on the apocalypse, both by quotations from Latin authors, and from ancient Roman coins. They claimed to be the offspring of Mars, their god of war, whom they honored and worshipped by horse-races and horse-sacrifices in spring and fall from the time of Romulus, the founder of their state, down to the time of the emperors. The horse was also, according to Pliny, one of the ancient Roman war-standards; so that Mars, the Horse, and the Roman people, had an established and recognized affinity.
The introduction of the Roman Horse into the symbolization of the first four seals as representative of the Roman people, was peculiarly appropriate. It was their symbol as pagans — worshippers of their father Mars through the horse which they sacrificed to him. It represented the pagan Roman people, who were to be ridden by the judgments of the first, second, third and fourth seals in retribution for the cruelties they perpetrated upon the seed of the Woman in their fight of faith against idolatry during the first.
Now the diverse colors of the horses indicate certain diverse conditions of the body politic typified by the horses. White is emblematic of peace; red of war, black of lamentation, mourning and woe; pale green of famine and pestilence. From the time of John, the pagan body politic, with whom he and his brethren and fellowservants were
contending to the deatfy was to pass through seal-periods of a peaceful onslaught upon their superstitions, war, famine and pestilence, in the order of symbolical enumeration. The first seal-period, then, was to be a period of internal peace and prosperity to the pagan Roman world; and this period is only found in pagan Roman history subsequent to the death of Domitian, between that event and the accession of the emperor Commodus, A.D. 180.
This, then, is the chronological initiatory epoch of the seals. The Lamb begins the unrolling of the scroll by causing the removal of the “timid inhuman Domitian,” A.D. 96; and the introduction upon the arena of a new class of imperial agents, who should promote the material prosperity and happiness of the people. John saw the change and partook of its benefit. On the opening of the first seal, he returned from exile. He lived through the short reign of Nerva; and died, according to the consent of antiquity, in the early part of the reign of Trajan: an event very analogous to that of Daniel, who lived to see the opening of the “2400 evening-morning’’ period; and then went his way till the end shall be when he and John will arise to their inheritance at the end of the days.
SECTION 1
THE EPHESO-SMYRNEAN STATE
Vol. 1 pp. 428, 432, 433.
This section of the subject answers to those things written within the scroll pertaining to the concluding portion of the Ephesian, and commencement, or first part of the Smyrnean, state of the Body of Christ.
ACT I. — SEAL PERIOD FIRST.
Chap. 4:1,2
The Archer of the White Horse goes forth from the Lamb with his Bow on a career of conquest.
A.D. 96.
I.
INITIATION OF THE SEAL-PERIOD.
- “And / saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard from one of the four living ones saying as a voice of thunder, Come and see!”
In spirit John was in the Lord's day, and “saw” spirit-manifestations, or spirit-forms, styled by us symbols or emblems; and among these was the spirit-manifestation, or “sign,” of this first-seal period. It
was all a visual creation of the spirit “signified to his servant John,’" that through this recorded rehearsal, might be shown to the fellow- servants of the apostle, his brethren and companions in the Domitian tribulation, and in the kingdom and patient waiting for Jesus Christ ha del genesthai en tachei, things which must come to pass speedily.
These honored “servants of the Deity,” while John was in Patmos, shared with him in the great tribulation inflicted upon the whole community of the faithful at the close of the first century by the government of “the timid inhuman Domitian.” This man was son of Vespasian, and brother of Titus, the renowned destroyers of the holy city and temple of the Jews. These had learned in the school of experience the value of reason, humanity, and justice in the government of mankind; and they accordingly exhibited a character which, in some of its parts, was still new on the throne previously occupied by Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Vitellius — the character of wisdom, propriety, and humanity, assumed for its own sake, and without any intention to circumvent the people, or to impose on the world But the fortunes of their family soon devolved upon a person equally unfit to sustain them, and equally unfit to be endured by a submissive world.
Domitian ascended the throne of the Caesars, A.D. 81; and, as a “destroyer of the earth,” his tyranny was endured for fifteen years. The greatness of his family alarmed his pusillanimity, which could only be appeased by the blood of those Romans whom he either feared, or hated, or esteemed. His ferocity does not appear to have been inflamed against the Christians immediately upon his accession to power. He increased in cruelty as he approached the end of his reign, when he renewed the horrors of Nero’s persecution, imputing to his victims the guilt of “atheism and Jewish manners,” which was the common charge against christadelphians[1] on account of their refusal to worship the idols of Greece and Rome. “Many,” says Dion, “were condemned who had embraced Jewish customs, part of them were put to death, and others spoiled of their goods and banished.” Tertullian says, he ordered John to be cast into a caldron of boiling oil, but that he came out unhurt. If this really happened, it did not bring liberty to the apostle who was forthwith driven from the haunts of men, and confined in Patmos, a solitary island of the sea.
In this state of things at the close of Domitian’s maladministration of power, there was nothing answerable to the spirit’s symbolization of
the first seal period. There was no whiteness in the situation nor the times for pagan, Jew, or Christadelphian. How much longer the tyrant should redden them with their own blood, and desolate their hearths with his fierceness, who could tell? A gloomy cloud was impending; and, as there was no habeas corpus for the defence of liberty, the lives and property of the whole people were suspended on the fiat of “the basest of men.”
[1] The word Christadelphian is used in this volume as representative of the real Brethren of Christ in contradistinction to the common herd of professors who undeservedly appropriated to themselves the name of Christian, which has long since ceased to represent the believers of “the truth as it is in Jesus.”