Revelation 6:1-17

With the beginning of this chapter we enter upon the fourth or leading section of the Apocalypse, extending to chap. Revelation 18:24. The section contains what had been described in chap. Revelation 4:1 as ‘the things which must come to pass.' Chaps. 4 and 5 have been only preparatory to these ‘things:' now we come to the things themselves. Here, therefore, the Apocalypse in the stricter sense of the word may be properly said to begin. The object of the section is to unfold the great principles which shall mark the history of the Church in her struggle with the world, throughout the whole period of the present Dispensation. We are to behold the ‘Son of man' (chap. Revelation 1:13), the Priest and King of His Church, meeting and overcoming His people's foes, establishing His own reign of truth and righteousness, preserving His saints amidst all the sorrows and persecutions which they meet while they follow in His steps, bringing them out even of the degenerate Church herself, and finally conducting them to the perfect happiness of the New Jerusalem. The reader must observe that throughout the whole of this section we have to deal with principles, not with particular historical events. This will become clearer as we proceed; but even at the outset it is necessary to fix the thought firmly in the mind. No single detail of future history will be presented to our view. We shall see only in successive pictures the great relations subsisting between God and man in the present preparatory scene, the relation of the glorified Lord to His own people, and His relation in them to a hostile world upon the one hand, and to a Church which proves faithless to her high vocation upon the other. Christ's perfect kingdom cannot be established except through opposition to the two last-named powers. It cannot therefore be established without a struggle in which the children of God must share the fate of their Lord and Master. He suffered from the enmity both of the Roman Government and of that Church of His day which had been constituted by the appointment, and organized upon the plan, of God Himself. A similar fate awaits His followers; and it is a fate so strange, so contrary to all that they naturally look for, as to make it a matter of supreme importance that they shall be prepared to meet it.

This Revelation begins in chap. 6 with the opening of the roll sealed with seven seals which the Lamb has in His hands. The seven seals are divided into two groups of four and three. Various considerations make this so clear that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it at any length. It will be observed that the first four are distinguished from the three that follow by the fact, that each of them sets before us a rider coming forth upon a horse, and that each is introduced in answer to the cry of one of the living creatures, ‘Come,' while nothing of the kind is to be found in the second group. The line of demarcation is also marked by the obvious circumstance that, at the opening of the fifth seal, we pass from the visible to the invisible world (chap. Revelation 6:9), a circumstance the more worthy of notice because it finds a parallel in the visions of the seven Trumpets and the seven Bowls. Nor is it difficult to see why we should now have a division into four and three, instead of that division into three and four which marked the Epistles to the seven churches. The contest of the Church with the world is before us, and four is the world's number. The visions of the horses and their riders may be compared with Zechariah 1:7-11; Zechariah 6:1-8.