The Pastor’s Cut: Every sermon leaves something behind. Time runs out, but insight remains. The Pastor’s Cut is where those hidden pieces come to light. Each week, I revisit a passage I preached and share a truth, angle, or application that didn’t make it into Sunday’s message. Sometimes it is a deeper theological thread. Sometimes it is a pastoral word that presses closer to the heart. Always, it is something worth seeing. If you have ever wondered what was left unsaid, this is your invitation to lean in, look again, and discover more of what God’s Word is doing beneath the surface.
On Sunday, we dove headfirst into some of the most often debated verses in scripture. In Revelation 6, Jesus Christ begins to open the seals on the scroll. Each of the first four seals are directly connected to a rider on a different colored horse. There are a few inter-connected interpretive decisions with these horses. The first is discerning the identity of the rider on the white horse. He is the first of the four horsemen, and he is described as follows:
Revelation 6:2 “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.”
In order to get our bearings straight, it is important to remember the general frameworks that scholars typically divide when interpreting Revelation. Some hold to a preterist view, or more precisely a “partial-preterist” view. This view sees the majority of the events of Revelation occurring immediately after John recorded them in the first century. In their view, the white horse represents either an invading pagan ruler from the first century, or in some cases a reference to Christ spiritually returning in 70AD before the destruction of the temple. Some hold to a futurist view. Futurists, who constitute a good majority of the American Church today, see the majority of the book of Revelation as describing events still yet to happen in our future. In their view, the white horse typically represents a future antichrist figure who will emerge on the political scene just before the end of this age. Some hold to the idealist view. Idealists see the majority of the book of Revelation describing what happens throughout history to Christians of all ages. in this sense the horses
I have become convinced of the Idealist approach to Revelation. While it is true, that the symbols of Revelation may have had extremely immediate applications for the Apostle John (the partial-preterist view), the greater purpose of the entire book is to describe the real world for all Christians in every generation until Christ returns. These four horsemen did not just ride out once in our past. Nor will they only ride out once in our future. These four horsemen are indicative of ongoing realities of life in the Church Age. They are like echoes rebounding across the pages of history.
With that framework in mind, interpreting the rider on the white horse is not only made more clear, but it also leave us as readers of Revelation with an overwhelming sense of God’s purpose today.
The rider on the white horse is not a future antichrist figure who will establish himself as a world leader (the futurist view). Nor is the rider on the white horse a historic world leader who enacted destruction on Israel on time in the past (the partial-preterist). Rather, the rider on the white horse is Christ, who rides triumphantly throughout history, conquering souls for his glory and establishing his kingdom among the nations. In other words, for roughly the last 2,000 years, the greatest power on this planet is the invisible hand of Christ steadily galloping through the nations bringing the Gospel of Peace to the world, as he wins for himself a people from every tongue, tribe, nation, and language.
It is not simply my Idealistic interpretive framework that has convinced me of this. An extremely helpful biblical tool is what we call “the analogy of Scripture.” This simply means that we use scripture to interpret scripture. In this case, Revelation 19:11-12 is a clear passage that can help shed light on Revelation 6:2 (a potentially less clear passage).
“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself…”
In Revelation 19, the rider on the white horse is Christ. Many commentators simply write this comparison off by stating that the John is speaking of two completely different people in Revelation 6 and Revelation 19. But I find that write-off hard to accept. In a book full of symbols, for the Apostle John to so clearly utilize the exact same image to identify two completely different people, especially when in at least one of the passages that person is none other than Christ himself, is too large a stretch of my imagination to accept.
Further, the idea that the rider on the white horse is Christ conquering with the gospel is consistent with the rest of scripture. The prophet Daniel foresaw the conquering messianic age when he wrote in Daniel 2:44:
“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever…”
The hope of the Messiah, and the hope of the Messianic Age, was that through the Messiah’s rule, the Kingdom of God would not only be established in the midst of the nations, but that it would grow steadily and surely. Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God is “like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:19).
Indeed, the other three horses of various colors follow this white horse. And that reminds us that the growth of God’s Kingdom on earth does not come without satanic resistance. War, pestilence, sickness, persecution of the saints, and all-around devastation will continue until the end, when Christ returns in physical form. But each of those forces are lesser forces and lesser stories. The first horse represents the main storyline of scripture, what is really happening right now. The Gospel is going forward! Souls are being won to faith in Christ their King! Christ’s conquering is first and foremost spiritual as souls are won to true faith, but that inward change has a very real and physical effect on that person’s life and family and community and God’s ethic is adhered to, and God’s spirit works through their life in new ways.
If we believe that Christ is riding out conquering right now, then it ought to make us very bold and courageous in our Christian living. We are not those on the losing side of history. Life in this world is indeed frightening. Revelation ensures us that the path of Christ’s ultimate victory over every enemy includes many trials and difficulties. But we are not those who live in fear of the final three horses. We are those who live in the confidence of the king who sits on the white horse.
