Revelation 6:3

And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, Come. And another horse came forth, a red horse: and to him that sat thereon it was given to take peace from the earth, and that they should slay one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

The interpretation of this and the two following horsemen is clear enough. Practically all students see this one as bloodshed, warfare, and the desolation caused by the sword. One point of difference is grounded upon a different word for "sword" being used in this passage and in Revelation 6:8. It could be that the use of a synonym in one place or another has no significance. Swords of all descriptions have been used in warfare throughout history. If a reason is sought, it probably appears in the fact of the Roman sword being in view here, the one used in the times of the apostles.

The word here means the Roman short sword, called great, not because it was disproportionate to the horse and rider, but because of the constant and terrible slaughter it symbolizes.[20]

The Roman short sword was also "great" because it was the triumphant weapon which enabled Roman armies to destroy the ingenious phalanx, the military device perfected and used by Alexander the Great in his conquest of the world. Just as the French crossbow overcame and vanquished the English long bow, the Roman short sword was supreme over every other weapon for an extended period of history.

They should slay one another ... Hendriksen applied this to "religious persecution,"[21] but we cannot so limit it. It means all warfare and bloodshed, as evident from the pronoun "they" which cannot indicate the church, and from the further fact that the slaughter of the Christians is given in this same series under the fifth seal, following. Also, there is the pattern of three and four, or four and three, as subdivisions of the numerous sevens in Revelation; and all of these first four judgments are upon the "whole world," the number four usually being applied to things of the earth and the number three usually being evident when the church is spoken of.

Again the key of understanding is in the Olivet discourse. "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." "This refers to no particular war, but to all war in general."[22] The history of mankind is hardly anything else other than a record of one brutal conflict after another. Lenski rejected the view that warfare in any sense follows the preaching of the gospel as a consequence; and, in a sense, he is correct. Wars of course existed before the gospel; but they did not exist before sin and rebellion entered Eden. In the sense, therefore, of a rejection of the gospel being a conscious choice of continuing in sin, it is morally true that wars follow.

The historicist view of Revelation continues to be attractive to many people, despite the many objections to it. Barnes' interpretation of the four seals was:[23]

1seal.....a period of great prosperity for the church until A.D. 180.

2seal.....a period of 92 years beginning with the death of Commodus.

3seal.....a period of excessive taxation prior to A.D. 248.

4th seal.....the period from A.D. 248 to 268, in which half the people on earth (Gibbon) died of famine, pestilence, etc.

Note that the period of "great prosperity" was the period of many persecutions and martyrdoms. Is this great prosperity? In the fourth seal, is it proper to single out a mere 20 years out of nearly 2,000 years, as being entitled to an individual horse in this parade of symbols? Gibbon also wrote that in the great Black Death plague of the mid-fourteenth century, "the moity," (the majority) of mankind perished. Thus, an event well over a thousand years later is just as good a fulfillment of the fourth seal as the one chosen by Barnes.

All of the things symbolized by the four seals existed in John's current era, and they have continued to exist ever since. When was there ever a time when the red horse of war's desolation no longer ravaged the earth? This condition, like that of the continued proclamation of the gospel, will go on until the end of time. Again, from the Olivet discourse: "Wars and rumors of wars ... but the end is not yet" (Matthew 24:6).

[20] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. John's Revelation (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1943), p. 225.

[21] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 120.

[22] Frank L. Cox, op. cit., p. 49.

[23] Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament, Revelation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1961), pp. 142-146.