First for those following the outline … oops. I did Rev 1-4
when it should have been 1-6 so today’s 7-11 is changed to 5-10 and next week
will be 11-17 and then back on track.
Verse 5:6 has the only one capable of opening the seals come
on the scene:
I looked, and between the throne
and the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders stood a
Lamb who appeared to have been slaughtered. The Lamb had seven horns and seven
eyes (the eyes are the seven Spirits of God sent out over all the earth).
In the previous verse one of the 24 elders has John looking
for a lion to which he sees a lamb. This is one of the keys showing that Jesus
is not who anyone expected. He did eventually win over evil with a humble act
of being the sacrificial lamb for all mankind.
With the first seal broken we see the first horseman in
verse 6:2:
Then I looked, and what a sight!
There was a white horse carrying a rider with a bow. He wore a wreath and came
riding like a conqueror, intent on complete victory.
Couple things we need to look at before diving in here is
Matthew 24:1-10 where Jesus explains what is to come and notice how they
correspond to the first 4 horseman. Now the first one is the most difficult to
understand since many say it’s Jesus, while others say it’s the Antichrist
since later in Rev 19:12 it shows Jesus’ return on a white horse.
I think the best explanation is neither, but rather the rise
in false religions. This we are seeing today, even so much as the Christian
religion is being perverted to have it related to stuff and not the “Way”. Today
it even gets divided into New Age mumbo-jumbo and humanism from science. We see
the next 3 also being explained in Matthew 24 with the rise of war, economic
collapse, famine and eventually the forth horseman in verse 6:8 is death:
I looked; and behold, there was a
pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades accompanied him.
Together they were granted authority over one-fourth of the earth to kill with
weapons, with famine, with disease, and with wild animals that roamed the
earth.
Having turned a pale green once this is how my family
described me when I had my cardiac arrest. I was dead for the most part, but
came back. The “pale green” horseman represents death and the look of death. I
believe this was much clearer to the people of their time since their dealing
with dead were not boxes of ashes or a made up corpse to look alive. No they had
a greyish green corpse, so they would understand the analogy.
The next lists of problems are the 7 trumpets. We see most
are natural disasters from volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, meteors, “red tides”
and much more. Verse 9:3 has the fifth trumpets plague:
From the
smoke, locusts appeared and swarmed upon the earth. They were
given power, like the power of scorpions on the earth.
These will torment mankind, but not kill them. As you
can see this is a very cursory explanation of the seals and trumpets, but we
see many happening today and we can now understand what the other ones imply
with natural events that once were unexplained. Now some like this plague or
terror have a very difficult to understand the imagery. This may represent not
actual locust, but rather demons or a spirit level terror.