Chapter 6 (pdf)
Download1 Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” 2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.
Joel describes the coming army as horses in chapter 2:4 Their (v2 - a great and strong army) appearance is like that of horses, and they gallop like swift steeds. 5 With a sound like that of chariots they bound over the mountaintops, like the crackling of fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army deployed for battle. 6 Nations writhe in horror before them; every face turns pale. 7 They charge like mighty men; they scale the walls like men of war. Each one marches in formation, not swerving from the course. 8 They do not jostle one another; each proceeds in his path. They burst through the defenses, never breaking ranks.
Here the great and strong army is Rome and the rider is the Emperors. The first rides on a white horse. If we interpret the rider of this horse to be the Roman Emperors just after the siege on Jerusalem, 90AD, we can watch this prophecy unfold chronologically. Going off the research done by Barnes, Benson, Henry, Elliot and others, they agree this is a Roman emperor, not Christ or a supposed antichrist. Christ does not carry a bow but a sword, and has crowns upon crowns, instead of a laurel-type crown. You can check the Strong’s references to see it’s a different Greek word of crown. Christ is also shown as continuously opening the seals. I am quoting from Wikipedia showing the fulfillment of the horses, riders and timeline of the opening of the first seal. See “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse
“In Edward Bishop Elliott's interpretation, the Four Horsemen represent a prophecy of the Roman Empire's subsequent history; the horse's white colour signifies triumph, prosperity, and health in the Roman political body. For the next 80 or 90 years, succeeding the banishment of the prophet John to the island of Patmos and covering the successive reigns of the emperors Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines (Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius), a golden age of prosperity, union, civil liberty and good government unstained with civil blood unfolded. The agents of this prosperity, personified by the rider of the white horse, are these five emperors wearing crowns, who reigned with absolute authority and power under the guidance of virtue and wisdom, the armies being restrained by their firm and gentle hands.”
Nerva started to reign in 96 AD, and ushered in a time of peace that is referred to as “Pax Romana” or “Roman Peace.” The Pax Romana leaders specifically from Crete (Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius) were skillful with the bow, and had a bow on their coins.
A word about the antichrist. Below is every reference in the Bible to the word antichrist:
1 John 2:18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
1 John 2:22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
1 John 4:3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
2 John 1:7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.
I want to caution you to assign traits to the word antichrist that are not there. According to John, the antichrist is one who is coming and many have come at the time of his writing. Again in 4:3 the spirit was coming and is now in the world already. His writing was before the siege of Jerusalem, which was the end of the age for the Jews, the destruction of the Temple and sacrifices, the last hour. The antichrist denies the Father and the Son. So much so that it denies that Jesus, the Christ, came in the flesh. The antichrist spirit is the basis of the trinity, the creed of the Nicolaitans in chapter 2. Saying that a specific man or leader in the future can be the antichrist takes these incredibly few verses out of context.
In the bible study above, there are more bible verses to study if you would like to deepen your knowledge of these events.
3 When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Looking again to the Old Testament prophecies, the red horse is war and bloodshed. This verse says the red horse takes peace from the earth so that would also confirm that the previous white horse was peaceful.
(Wikipedia Four Horsemen) Elliott further recites that, after the death of Commodus, a most turbulent period lasting 92 years unfolded, during which time 32 emperors and 27 pretenders to the Empire hurled each other from the throne by incessant civil warfare. The sword was a natural universal badge, among the Romans, of the military profession. The apocalyptic figure armed with a great sword indicated an undue authority and unnatural use of it. Military men in power, whose vocation was war and weapon the sword, rose by it and also fell. The unrestrained military, no longer subject to the Senate, transformed the Empire into a system of pure military despotism.
192 - 232 AD - In 192 AD Commodus was assassinated and this marks the end of the Golden Age of Rome, or the Pax Romana. The next 40 years show emperors being murdered, battling one another and trying to usurp their rivals. Wikipedia shows 24 failed usurpations from 192 - 285 AD. Read their Wikipedia page “Crisis of the Third Century.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century
5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”
Here is a quote from biblehub's Barnes commentary: ...(c) The balances: "and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand." The original word rendered here as "a pair of balances," is ζυγὸν zugon. This word properly means a yoke, serving to couple anything together, as a yoke for cattle. Hence it is used to denote the beam of a balance, or of a pair of scales - and is evidently so used here. The idea is, that something was to be weighed, in order to ascertain either its quantity or its value. Scales or balances are the emblems of justice or equity (compare Job 31:6; Psalm 62:9; Proverbs 11:1; Proverbs 16:11); and when joined with symbols that denote the sale of grain and fruit by weight, become the symbol of scarcity. Thus, "bread by weight" Leviticus 26:26 denotes scarcity. So in Ezekiel 4:16, "And they shall eat bread by weight." The use of balances here as a symbol would signify that something was to be accurately and carefully weighed out...
... (b) The particular order, under this oppressive system of taxation, respecting the preservation of vineyards and oliveyards, may be referred to, also, as corresponding to the command sent forth under this rider, not to "hurt the oil and the wine." That order was in the following words: "If anyone shall sacrilegiously cut a vine, or stint the fruit of prolific boughs, and craftily feign poverty in order to avoid a fair assessment, he shall, immediately on detection, suffer death, and his property be confiscated" (Cod. Theod. l. xiii. lib. xi. seq.; Gibbon, i. 358, note). Mr. Gibbon remarks: "Although this law is not without its studied obscurity, it is, however, clear enough to prove the minuteness of the inquisition, and the disproportion of the penalty."
(c) Under this general subject of the severity of taxation - as a fact farspreading and oppressive, and as so important as to hasten the downfall of the empire, may be noticed a distinct edict of Caracalla as occurring more directly in the period in which the rider with the balances may be supposed to have gone forth. This is stated by Mr. Gibbon (i. 91) as one of the important causes which contributed to the downfall of the empire. "The personal characters of the emperors, their victories, laws, and fortunes," says he, "can interest us no further than they are connected with the general history of the decline and fall of the monarchy. Our constant attention to that object will not suffer us to overlook a most important edict of Antoninus Caracalla, which communicated to all the free inhabitants of the empire the name and privileges of Roman citizens. His unbounded liberality, however, flowed not from the sentiments of a generous mind; it was the sordid result of avarice," etc.
Severe taxation is seen as one of the downfalls of an empire.
7 And when the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” 8 And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.
Now the rider of the horse is not an emperor here, so the death that follows is not a decree. We see death not at the hands of the emperor, but at the hands of famine, pestilence, and beasts as executed by God. Rome in the first century is believed to have 1.5 million people in the city, and from 300 AD to around 1400 AD, there would be less than 50,000, sometimes less than 20,000 in the city.
Ezekiel 5:15 You shall bed a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror, to the nations all around you, when I execute judgments on you in anger and fury, and with furious rebukes—I am the Lord; I have spoken— 16 when I send against you the deadly arrows of famine, arrows for destruction, which I will send to destroy you, and when I bring more and more famine upon you and break your supply of bread. 17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will rob you of your children. Pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I am the Lord; I have spoken.
This time period coincides with the end of "The Crisis of the Third Century." Domitian would divide the Empire (v12) into east and west, and each portion has an emperor and an augustus. These are the four parts of the earth. See Strong's interpretation of fourth Cognate: 5067 tétartos – fourth; (figuratively) a part of the whole (totality, all four quarters). This is helpful because the famine, pestilince and plague happened in all four parts of the empire. Famine came from a disruption in farming due to the death toll of the Plague of Cyprian (250-265 AD). At one point in this plague, 5000 people died daily in Rome. The barbarians were attacking the empire and between the attacks and the plague, entire towns were depopulated. Some of the effects of the plague were: fever, throat sores, diarrhea, exhaustion, vomiting, and gruesome skin lesions, with blood potentially coming from orifices like the nose and eyes.
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
Remember the saints in the early church who stood firm in their faith and gave all, even in the face of torture. They received robes of white to show their faithfulness unto death. The wiki page “Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire” goes into depth on the level of persecution, emperor by emperor. It’s a good read if you want to be reminded how the early church suffered to keep the words of Jesus alive.
Joseph Mede, A Key to the Apocalypse: "...they should endure for a little, until some of their brethren, who, after Christianity had begun to prevail, were, under Licinius, Julian, and the Arians, to be butchered in like manner, should be added to the number; and then, on the sounding of the trumpets, a remarkable vengeance should be taken on the empire for the guilt of so much blood." The continuation of the massacre of christians with Augustus Diocletian (r. 283–305) began the Diocletianic persecution, the final general persecution of Christians, which continued to be enforced in parts of the empire until the Augustus Galerius (r. 305–311) issued the Edict of Serdica.
Wikipedia, “Persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire”: Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire, beginning in the 1st century AD and ending in the 4th century. Originally a polytheistic empire in the traditions of Roman paganism and the Hellenistic religion, as Christianity spread through the empire, it came into ideological conflict with the imperial cult of ancient Rome. Pagan practices such as making sacrifices to the deified emperors or other gods were abhorrent to Christians as their beliefs prohibited idolatry. The state and other members of civic society punished Christians for treason, various rumored crimes, illegal assembly, and for introducing an alien cult that led to Roman apostasy.[1] The first, localized Neronian persecution occurred under Emperor Nero (r. 54–68) in Rome. A number of mostly localized persecutions occurred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180).[2] After a lull, persecution resumed under Emperors Decius (r. 249–251) and Trebonianus Gallus (r. 251–253). The Decian persecution was particularly extensive. The persecution of Emperor Valerian (r. 253–260) ceased with his notable capture by the Sasanian Empire's Shapur I (r. 240–270) at the Battle of Edessa during the Roman–Persian Wars. His successor, Gallienus (r. 253–268), halted the persecutions.
Now for the fellow servants who will complete their number with the Diocletian Persecution.
In the winter of 302, Galerius urged Diocletian to begin a general persecution of the Christians. Diocletian was wary, and asked the oracle of Apollo for guidance. The oracle's reply was read as an endorsement of Galerius's position, and a general persecution was called on 24 February 303. According to recent research, "At least nine imperial orders were issued in 303 to 312 against Christianity. While Diocletian's orders were more concerned with the privileged upper classes of Christians, Maximinus Daia's orders were aimed at isolating all Christians from the Roman community"
There’s no way to know how many were killed in this persecution, the number varies from a few thousand, to possibly 60,000. Read Wikipedia’s “Diocletian Persecution” to see all the edicts and punishments issued by Diocletian in the 10 years of horror that Christians endured. This persecution along with the ones preceding it is the "great tribulation" referred to in chapter 7.
12 When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
Isaiah 34:1 Draw near, O nations, to hear, and give attention, O peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that fills it; the world, and all that comes from it. 2 For the Lord is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host; he has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter. 3 Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood. 4 All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. All their host shall fall, as leaves fall from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree…
…(v11) The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction. 12 No nobles will be left to proclaim a king, and all her princes will come to nothing. 13 Her towers will be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She will become a haunt for jackals, an abode for ostriches. 14 he desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. There the night creature will settle and find her place of repose. 15 here the owl will make her nest; she will lay and hatch her eggs and gather her brood under her shadow. Even there the birds of prey will gather, each with its mate.
The verses from Isaiah were about the nations that attacked Israel and took Judah captive.
Zechariah 1:15 And I am exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was angry but a little, they furthered the disaster. They had done the will of God by inflicting judgement against the Jews but they took things too far, and exceeded the punishment
God had for his people. God now has reached his limit of watching his people suffer and will inflict wrath on Rome.
The earthquake is the dividing of the empire from east to west. Diocletian was the one who made that decision, and he is the sun referred to here. The moon would be his co-emperor, Galerius. The sun (Diocletian) was as black as sackcloth, speaking of intense oppression (as the black horse is called). The full moon (Galerius) shows that he had full authority to issue edicts himself. His edicts are as blood, and would bring the death to the Christians. The stars (Philippians 2:15) and the believers who suffered, they lost their churches and their bibles. In his effort to eradicate Christianity, Diocletian ordered the "Edict against the Christians" and had their churches demolished and their holy books burned. Remember Rome is the dragon, and this dragon is still in power today.
Wikipedia Diocletianic Persecution: Diocletian requested that the edict be pursued "without bloodshed", against Galerius's demands that all those refusing to sacrifice be burned alive. In spite of Diocletian's request, local judges often enforced executions during the persecution, as capital punishment was among their discretionary powers. Galerius's recommendation—burning alive—became a common method of executing Christians in the East. After the edict was posted in Nicomedia, a man named Eutius tore it down and ripped it up, shouting "Here are your Gothic and Sarmatian triumphs!" He was arrested for treason, tortured, and burned alive soon after, becoming the edict's first martyr.
The fig tree is mentioned, and this is known to be Jerusalem, or the Jewish leaders (Jeremiah 24, Matthew 21 and 24). These are not mature, so the time for their fulfillment will wait, as shown in chapter 7. Them being blown by the wind shows another diaspora or moving to another area. This happened after Constantine was emperor.
14 The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”
Verses 14 through 17 deal with the impending wrath of the lamb which is fulfilled in the trumpet judgements. The sky of Rome, the sun and moon, was indeed rolled up like a scroll. The end of the empire came in 486 and we have to look to the scrolls of history to see how this mighty empire worked. After that there was a literal fulfillment of the terror affected everyone, great and small, and literally cause people to hide in caves and cellars from the fallout of ash. Here’s documentation of the effects from Wikipedia:
In 538, the Roman statesman Cassiodorus described the following to one of his subordinates in letter 25:
Luke 23:28 But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Fellow body of Christ, the benefit of studying this prophecy is to show God's unchanging nature. Even though this was fulfilled over 1500 years ago, the system of judgement is the same. Jesus was and is still at the helm of power, he was given the authority to judge from the father. He is our perfect judge, he knows every temptation and suffering because he was born into our humanity. The fall of Rome is the judgement of one of the heads of the red dragon beast (Chapter 17) and that beast will be completely destroyed (Revelation 20). The dragon is Babylon, and any nation that follows after Babylon will be destroyed like Rome was. The coming of Jesus (Revelation 1:7) is a test of our faithfullness. There is a reason he's called a lion! Guard your hearts, understand the workings of justice, and keep your hearts prepared for the suffering to come. Psalm 91 is your shield against the coming death, famine, plague, civil war, taxation, and persecution. Be prepared to give your life as Christ was prepared, and receive your white robe if that is your calling.