Such is the expressive heiroglyphic by which the Spirit "signified" to "his servants" the nature of the situation which should succeed the period in which they would “slay one another," and "a great machaira" would appear to aggravate the strife. The Lamb also opens this third seal. It is an opening, not to give exit to blessedness upon Roman society; for that is not the nature of a seal; but, to loose those evils upon the world, which would be calamitous to pagan, Jew, and
Jezebel-professors of Christianity, in all the empire. Though the evils would be general, “the Brethren,” or as many as had not the Jezebel doctrine, would, doubtless, not suffer so severely as others; for in the time of the first four seals, it was certainly a ministration of Spirit in which retribution came upon ecclesias "according to their works.” It was, I say, a ministration of Spirit, though not so amply manifested as when Paul wrote 1 Cor. 12, 13 and 14. The presence of the Four Living Ones, and the emanation of voices from them, as a part of the symbolization, proves this. When the fifth seal is opened, there is no invitation from a Living One to “come and see.” Yet the Spirit still lingered among the Lightstands, as may be inferred from the saying, “it was said unto them.”
The third Living One is the symbol of the ecclesia of the Deity in its Pergamo-Thyatiran declension. Its face was that of a man, and “full of eyes before and behind.” The reader will remember, that in the apocalypse these four living ones are related to two states — the state of suffering in the flesh; and the state of glory in the resurrection; and that they are only introduced in the prophetic drama where there is direct and potential ministration and manifestation of Spirit.