Revelation Chapter 6

The First Seal continued

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.”

THE LION AND A VOICE LIKE THUNDER

The living creature represented in the first seal if it was power, would have to be the Lion. We decided to see if there was any place that tied the voice of thunder to a lion and we found one later in Revelation.

“And he cried with a great voice, as a lion roars: and when he cried, the seven thunders uttered their voices. (Rev 10:3)

 It’s described in reverse there where we see the voice described as a lion, but what came out was seven thunders. While not conclusive that seems to add weight to the thought that the first creature should be the lion, representing power.

We originally tried to place the creatures in the order that we found them in Chapter 4, but the seals seem easier to explain in a different order. For the time being, we assume that the context of each seal should indicate to us which creature is talking. We see in the visions of Ezekiel, Chapters 1 and 10 that he named the faces in two different orders. Because Ezekiel is different, we can assume that we are not limited to the given order of the creatures in Chapter 4 of Revelation. Perhaps each place including this one, has a different order to teach a different lesson?

If we examine Rev 2:2, which is the first church, we find that they were having trouble with false Apostles, even while the true Apostles were still on the scene. These false Apostles were trying to insert their erroneous doctrines into the church, and they must have been at least partially successful, because by the time of the second church, the doctrinal controversies were already overcoming the truth.

Our Lord warned us of this very thing, in Matt 24:5, “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many”.

In the text from Matthew, we can see that our Lord had warned about early false Christ’s, who would be trying to lead the church astray. They were not actually claiming to be Christ himself, but rather were claiming to be representatives of him in thinking that they could set doctrine and policy for him, just as Papacy does now! For the above reasons, it seems obvious that the rider on this horse represents some in the early church who were forcing their opinions on others, and misleading the church on doctrinal matters. The word Christ can mean anointed, so those who are making the false claim are not necessarily saying that they are Christ the savior, but they are saying that they are anointed of God and appointed to rule over his church. The Papacy is an obvious example of this.

Just because they didn’t have civil power yet, didn’t stop some from trying to rule over their fellow Christians or to impose their doctrinal ideas on them. Instead they used superstition or their position of power in the church to force others to do and believe what they thought was correct. They thought that they had to tell others in the church what they needed to do to be saved. This wouldn’t have been bad, if they knew what they were talking about, but what they were advocating in most cases was actually leading away from Christ. A good example of this was those who felt that the Jewish Christians still had to observe the law, even though Paul had told them they didn’t need to. In Galatians Paul tells us that they had even questioned his authority as an Apostle, in order to get others to accept their false doctrinal positions.

We noticed that the Nicolaitans are mentioned not only in the first church, but a second time in the third church, which is when Papacy had actually gained civil power. This indicates that the Lord knew that the small beginnings of this spirit in the first church would eventually grow into the Papal rise to power, especially by the time of the third. If everyone in the church had been properly humble the Papacy would have never come about.

Continued with next post.