Out of the fateful, seven-sealed book which the Lamb took from the right hand of the Almighty come two series of consecutive judgments--the Seven Trumpets and the Seven Bowls of Wrath. It will be seen that the Seven Seals sum up all these judgments, for the Trumpets and Bowls are but a vision under the seventh Seal. The Seventh Seal reveals the Seven Trumpets; and the sounding of the seventh Trumpet involves the Seven Bowls of wrath, "which are the last, for in them is finished the wrath of God."

      These two judgment-series are the backbone of the book of Revelation and, with some supplementary visions, form the bulk and body of it. It is well therefore, to take a wide outlook upon the meaning and purpose of these staggering calamities.

      First of all, these judgments are not only just, but they do not come till due and overdue. Our attention is called to the fact that men have filled up their cup of iniquity to overflowing. (Comp. Gen. 15:16.) So long has God waited and kept silence, bearing and forbearing, that many have come to think Him slack (2 Peter 3:9) and others assure themselves that God would never do anything, one way or the other. (Zeph. 1:12.) Not till the grain is dry (Rev. 14:15, margin) does He rise up to the harvest; and the grapes are dead ripe before they are gathered into the winepress of the wrath of God. (Rev. 14:18-20.) Patience and grace have had their full day: now dawns the Day of Vengeance blood-red, and all the more terrible for the long delay. Upon that generation will fall the full measure of judgment; for they are heirs of all the light and lessons of the past, heirs also to the accumulated accounts of generations gone by. (Comp. Matt. 23:35, 36.) As these lines are being written already the clouds--such clouds as have not been heretofore--are gathering thick upon the horizon. The evening air is sultry and surcharged with heavy forebodings of a coming storm. When the tempest breaks it will break suddenly.

      Secondly, the judgments are for a stated purpose--"to destroy them that destroy the earth." That purpose will be fully accomplished. God will finish His work, His strange work, and cut it short in righteousness. "Behold, the tempest of Jehovah, even his wrath, is gone forth, sweeping tempest: it shall burst upon the head of the wicked. The fierce anger of Jehovah will not return until he have executed, and till he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall understand it perfectly." (Jer. 23:19, 20.)

      Lastly, the judgments are mingled with mercy. (Hab. 3:2.) [31] They do not come in one fell swoop, but step-wise and progressively till a climax is reached. There are lulls in the storm in which men may have time to collect themselves and think. There are even voices calling men to belated repentance, for that "the great hour of judgment is come," and regretful mention of the fact that "they repented not." What can be salvaged will be salvaged. As a matter of fact, many will avail themselves, and amid terrific sufferings and persecutions will wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb--of Israel a great company, and of the nations an innumerable multitude. "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. (Isa. 26:9.) The rest, by the very mercy of the judgments, are hardened, as in the plagues of Egypt.

      The lamb proceeds to break the seals. The first four seals are distinguished from the rest, as we shall see; two follow in succession; and the last, the seventh, after an intermediate vision. (6:1-8:2.)

      "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, "COME!"¹ At this summons there came out a white horse. He that sits upon it has a bow; a conqueror's crown is given him, and he comes conquering and to conquer.

      At the opening of the second seal, and at the challenge of the second Living Creature, came a red horse. Its rider is empowered to take peace from the earth, "that they should slay one another." There "was given unto him a great sword."

      The third Seal is opened, the third Living Creature cries, Come! and a third, a black horse, appears, whose rider holds balances in his hand. From amidst the four Living Creatures a voice announces famine-prices of the staples of life.

      When the Lamb breaks the fourth seal, the fourth Living Creature cries Come! and behold a pale horse of ghastly greenish hue (Greek, "chloros," green). He that sits upon it is Death; and Hades (which "swallows up what Death destroys") follows with him. To these two authority is given (but limited to the fourth part of the earth) "to kill with sword and with famine and with death (i. e., pestilence), and by the wild beasts of the earth"--which are God's "four sore judgments." (Ezek. 14:21.)

      What, then, are these strange horses and horsemen? What is meant by their going forth into the earth? In the prophecy of Zechariah we find the same kind of symbol used, and there they are seen to be Jehovah's messengers going forth on missions of Judgment. (Zech. 1:8-11; 6:1-8.) They are called "the four winds (or spirits) of heaven which go forth standing before the Lord of all the earth." (Zech. 6:5. Comp. Dan. 7:2; Rev. 7:1). They have no other meaning here. At the signal given in heaven [32] these four go forth on the earth to execute the righteous decrees of God.

      The first, the white horse and its rider, has occasioned some dispute. Some (influenced by Rev. 19:11-14) are quite certain that this is Christ Himself; others aver that here we see the Antichrist. One surmises that this is the Roman general Titus pushing forth to destroy Jerusalem (though by general consensus of scholarship Revelation was written 25 years after the fall of Jerusalem, and this was a thing yet future to John, Rev. 4:1.) Some can make it fit beautifully to the history of Rome which had five good emperors soon after John's time, during which time the church grew and prospered. Others think that the triumphant progress of the white horse represents the success and spread of the gospel. Upon the respective merits of these views we have no time to enter; nor do we feel obligated to make this fit to anything whatever, but rather to get the force and meaning of what John here tells us. It is not the Christ that rides the white horse. It would seem somewhat incongruous that He should open the seal and be represented as Himself proceeding from it, seated on a white horse. Or with what fitness could He be lined up in the same category with the other three, frightful and hideous figures of judgment, as one of them and parallel with their sort? And why should the first rider be an actual person, while the other three are but personifications, symbolic representations of the spirits of judgment sent forth from God?

      Nor have we here a picture of the gospel's victorious progress. When John wrote, the gospel had long since gone forth and overspread the known world; but this, as we are distinctly told at the outset (4:1), belongs to the future things.

      Yet this horse is white, which, in the Bible, is always a symbol of purity and righteousness. His bow betokens far-reaching conquest, and the crown ("stephanos," the conqueror's crown) signifies victory. In keeping with the obvious meaning of the other three horsemen, this one, then, is to be regarded as a potent force for righteousness as the color signifies, which had broken in upon the earth; and, in consequence, many far and near are humbling themselves before God. (Comp. Isa. 26:9; Dan. 12:10.)

      The other three horses are also spirits ("winds") and forces sent forth into the earth--the one stirring up war and vast bloodshed; the other breaking the staff of bread and bringing in famine; the third representing all powers of death and destruction, and sweeping the fourth part of the earth with every plague.

      The fifth seal is very different from the first four. Here John sees in the heavenly sanctuary the altar (at the base of which, in the Old Testament type, the blood--"which is the life"--of the sacrificial victims is poured out, Lev. 4:7); and under the altar John sees the souls of some who have been martyred "for the word of God and the testimony which they held." These cried with a great voice saying, "How long, O Master, the holy and true, [33] dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" A strange cry, indeed--for had not their Lord prayed, "Father, forgive them" when they nailed Him to the cross? So did Stephen also--"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." But these cry for vengeance. Yet vengeance is not revenge. The sense of justice lies deep in the heart of man and it is also the unchangeable attitude of God. Even the Lord Jesus "committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously" (1 Pet. 2:23), even while He "bore our sins in His body on the tree." Justice finally must intervene, and the whole creation will experience a relief and joy in God's righteous judgments. (Ps. 96:11-13.) For judgment do these souls pray. And they are not so much concerned for their own satisfaction as for the honor of God--for judgment-time at last has come. (Comp. Luke 18:7, 8.) But they must bide a little longer in rest (cp. 14:13) until another contingent of martyred ones should be added to their number. "The white robe assigned each of these martyr-spirits is a pledge of future and final glory, and a consoling proof that no judgment awaited them."

      The opening of the sixth seal shakes the whole world. The earth rocks in convulsions; the sun turns black as sackcloth; the moon red as blood; the stars fall; the heaven is removed as a scroll; and every mountain and island is moved out of its place. Among men reigns the wildest consternation. All those who "dwell upon the earth" (a term always used in a bad significance in this book) are startled out of their composure. In frantic fear all classes of people, high and low, great and small, now fully convinced that this is the hand of God, flee to the rocks and caverns for refuge (comp. Isa. 2:10, 11, 19-21), and terror-crazed they entreat the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them "from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." For (say they) "the great day of their wrath is come and who shall be able to stand?"

      To some, this sublime scene of terror is merely "highly figurative and symbolic language" without specific or definite meaning, except such as the commentator may see fit to give to it; as when some, for example, refer to "the politico-religious revolution under Constantine at the beginning of the 4th century, when Christianity became the state religion"; others to "the dissolution of the Roman empire"; others to the French Revolution, which was a mere "tempest in a teapot" in comparison with the vast scope of this prophecy. If any of us wants to make fit applications of scriptures to any analogous thing, it is well: that is legitimate and helpful, for the word of God is of perpetual significance and application. But application is not interpretation. If the various apt or inapt applications of this book offered us by the historical interpreters constituted the meaning of this book, we would have to give up the study of it in despair. Then we could indeed not tell what a prophecy means before its fulfillment, nor afterward either. Then it would take as much faith to believe in the alleged fulfillment as [34] in the original prophecy. Then, too, would we be at the mercy of the secular historian for the meaning of God's book. Then also would the grandeur of the prediction be lost in the pitiful meagerness and tameness of the fulfillment. Let who will take such a view; but we do not so discount the prophecies of this book.

      Others, however, in stricter acceptance of this prophetic vision, are convinced that it marks the end of all things; and to account for what follows after, they regard the other judgments as a reiteration of the judgment of the six seals. But this is not the end. We are not to take the expression, "the stars in the heaven fell to the earth," or "the heaven was removed as a scroll," in an astronomical sense; but, as always in the Bible and in common human speech also, in a phenomenal sense--that is, describing the appearance as it strikes the eye--just as we say, for example, "the sun rose out of the sea and set behind the hills." This is surely that convulsion of nature, foretold by the Lord Jesus: "signs in sun and moon and stars and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows; men fainting for fear and for expectation of the things which are coming on the world: for the power of the heavens shall be shaken." (Lk. 21:25, 26.) But it is not the final wind-up: things move right on and into "the great and terrible day of the Lord."

      Between the sixth and seventh seals stands a vision of two redeemed companies--the one company, taken out of Israel, 12,000 of each tribe, who previous to the letting loose of the great trouble are sealed for preservation; the other company, an innumerable multitude "out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues" who have come out of THE GREAT TRIBULATION. They stand before the throne of God and the Lamb, clothed in white robes and having palms in their hands. In wonderful words their eternal bliss is described. This vision of the two companies is independent, a parenthetical insertion between the sixth and seventh seals--as though God would reassure us as to the success of His work in the midst of apparent universal failure. The 144,000 sealed ones are simply Israelites:--the day of Israel's turning, as long foretold, has evidently come. (Hos. 14; Rom. 11:12, 15, 25, 26.) The vast gathering of redeemed Gentiles, on the other hand, has come out of "the Great Tribulation"--not merely great tribulation (as in Acts 14:22) but out of that great prophetic period of unexampled trouble, of which we shall learn more particularly at another time.

      The seventh seal is opened:--there followed a silence in heaven for the space of half an hour. Nothing transpires under this seal except the preparation of the sounding of the seven Trumpets. "And I saw the seven angels that stand before God; and there were given unto them seven trumpets." The seven trumpets issue out of the seventh seal. [35]

[TR3A 31-37]