Revelation Chapter 6

The First Seal

VERSE 1 and 2 “Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see. And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”

Here we present the alternative view, one held by many of the brethren.

THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE

In our study, there arose a major question about the white horse that was seen in the first seal. The problem is that at first glance, it appears that this horse is actually giving us a picture of the True Church, because of being white. Some brethren, as well as other commentators, actually feel that this is Christ, on the horse. The problem we see, is that the things this rider are doing, could be interpreted either way, good or bad, but since the other three horsemen are obviously in the wrong , it seemed strange that this horsemen would not be also. We eventually decided to go with the idea that this rider was bad, and see how that would work. In the final analysis, as we will see, that actually was the only correct conclusion.

If we look carefully at the main thing that this rider was doing, conquering and to conquer, we should understand that he should not have been doing that. Some might say that this was the early church going out to witness and to spread the gospel, which in a sense was correct, but the problem that we see is in how some were doing it. They should have been “preaching” and “witnessing”, but not conquering.

The word conquering that is used here is the same Strong’s word Strong’s # 3528 that is used to describe the first beast of Chapter 13.

“He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer (overcome) them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.” (Rev 13:7 NIV)

What we see happening is that the small beginnings of power this rider was using, were by the time of the fourth church transformed into the powerful church state system that was persecuting and conquering anyone that would not agree with them. This was unwarranted authority and ill-timed because they should have waited for the return of the Lord before beginning to reign in the name of Christ.

REGARDING THE WHITE HORSE

There are at least two different solutions that we can come to regarding the white horse, that show that this is not Christ.

In the first one we see that the horse is still white, because the Apostles were still on the scene or they had just passed away. The doctrines of the first church had not deteriorated to the point where they would be considered corrupted, so the horse is still white. When the Apostles died, their restraint was no longer available and the situation began to degenerate rapidly and for that reason the other horses are each showing a worse degree of corruption by their changing color. The rider of the white horse will as we will see, turn out to be an offending party. The rider is generally the one who controls a horse and this rider was steering the horse down the wrong doctrinal path, regarding the conquering spirit!

 We will take a look at the second in our next post.