The Epheso-Smyrnean State of the Ecclesias degenerates into the Pergamian. The doctrine of Balaam and the Nikolaitans gaining the ascendancy. Celsus, a heathen opponent of the word, objects, that christians were now so split into sects, that the name, christian, only remained to them in common.

ACT II. -- SEAL-PERIOD SECOND

Apoc. vi. 3,4

The rider of the Red Horse puts an end to the previous peace, and involves the populations of the Fourth Beast Polity in bloody civil wars.

A.D. 183

3. "And when He opened the Second Seal, I heard from the Second Living One saying, ‘Come and see!’ 4. And there went forth another, a fiery-red horse; and to him sitting upon him, to him it was given to take the peace from the earth and that they might slay one another, and there was given to him a great dagger."    

1. Preliminary Remarks

In my previous exposition I have shown that the Bowman of the first seal is emblematic of the spirit of the heavens manifested in the "we all" who had "come to A PERFECT MAN," who was engaged in an earnest contention for the faith against the superstition and infidelity of the world. This was that one styled by the Spirit in David, in Psal. lxviii. 18, adam, "the man," for whom the Lord Jesus received official gifts when he ascended to the right hand of power -- "thou receivest gifts !hebrew! ha’adam for the Man," or for the Adam. Paul styles Jesus, "made Lord and Christ," "the last Adam;" and says, that as the saints have born the image of the first Adam, so also shall they bear the image of the last (1 Cor. xv. 45-49). They shall be in nature like what he is now. But, in a moral sense they are required to be now like to what he was while on earth "learning obedience by the things which he suffered." This tuition developed the moral image of Deity, as the creative energy of the Spirit did the material image after his resurrection. It is divinely predestined, therefore, (and the predestination is a necessity that cannot be dispensed with) that all who shall inherit salvation in the kingdom of the Deity shall be "conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the Firstborn (or Chief) among many brethren." Paul says to the Colossians, "ye have put off the Old Man," or moral image of the First Adam, "with his deeds; and have put on the New Man," or last Adam, "who is renewed by knowledge after the image of him that created him" (iii. 9,10). This they had done. They were in the last Adam, and conformed to his moral image, in hope of being conformed to his material image at the coming of their Chief.

Here then are two men, or Two Adams, occupying the arena of the Roman Habitable -- the Old Adam and the New Adam. The former is an infidel atheistic sinner, declared by Paul to be atheos en to kosmo, atheist in the world. Read his summary of him in Eph. ii. 12; and his description of his vices in Rom. i. 21-32. The whole world of unenlightened natural men of all ages and generations constitutes collectively the Old Adam, who is also "the Devil and Satan" in a certain relation of things. This man has long since come to a perfect man -- to the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Antichrist. He is strong and lawless, doomed to perdition when the times apocalyptically "signified" shall be fulfilled.

The other Adam came upon the arena of the habitable in a later age and generation; and was regarded by him as an intruder, and an enemy to be ejected by all possible means, the end to be attained sanctifying everything, however criminal or ferocious. But, if he could not prevail by violence, it was within the scope of his policy to try and corrupt with flatteries; for if he could put to silence by these he would convert the New Man into a partizan, and all opposition would cease. So long, however, as each remained true to his principles, the Old Adam to those of the flesh, and the New Adam to those of the word, there could be nothing but war until the one or the other were subdued.

But, the New Man, though "perfect," did not in all the constituents of his body continue in all his conflicts undefiled. Much of his flesh became diseased and gangrenous, and perished by the way. This reduced his proportions considerably, and leaves him in his nineteenth century existence feeble, emaciated and decrepit; while the Old Adam is still robust and powerful.

In the days of the first seal, the New Man of the spirit was healthy, vigorous, and formidable to the Old Man of the Flesh; who ruled in the Pagan Church and State, as he does now in all the Churches and States of what he ignorantly calls "Christendom." The conflict between the two was very earnest and bloody. Many lives or souls were ruthlessly precipitated under the altar, while many of the Old Serpent-Man’s adherents fell from their allegiance, and became incorporated in the New Man. But, in this sanguinary strife all the desertions were not from the party of the Serpent; many relaxed their hold upon the Lamb, fell into the ranks of the enemy, and became, either implacable adversaries, or perverters of the truth, who pretended to have found a common ground, on which Jew, philosopher, vulgar Pagan, and christian might meet in the fellowship of the same essential opinions. Sects, formed of the factions who had become impatient of the restraints of the truth, had greatly multiplied. The seed sown in the first century by the seducers, evil men, and false prophets, of whom we read so much in the New Testament, was now in vigorous growth; multiplied, varied, complicated, and refined by endless subtleties and fancies, in which the poverty of taste and genius discovered itself abundantly.

There were at the time of the closing of the period of the first seal and the opening of the second, two classes among the professed adherents of the New Man, whose opposite characteristics were becoming daily more distinct. The one may be regarded as the vital and wholesome element of the man himself -- Christadelphians; those who held fast the Spirit’s Name, and had not denied His faith; and those of the Balaam class, who held the teaching of the Nikolaitans, or Gnostics, and were multiplying considerably. Instead of holding fast the Spirit’s Name, they were developing what in history is called the Arnestitheos apostasia, or Deity-denying apostasy, which affirmed that "Christ was no more than a man." The Spirit’s Name was the Father by his spirit manifested in Sin’s Flesh begotten and born, not of the will of man, but by his own creative energy, as was Adam the first: but, to say, that he was no more than a man, was to affirm, that he was begotten of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man; which was to lay the basis of a name which the spirit not only will not recognize, but one which he hates. These Gnostics also, while they claimed the name of christian, denied the Spirit’s faith, as do "the names and denominations" of modern times. These Nikolaitan sects amused and stultified themselves with the discussion of the merest trifles; such as, the proper time of the observance of Easter; the pretended prophetical illuminations of fanatics, and the questions agitated by the Eclectics of Egypt. These sects were "the Mystery of Iniquity" working under the name of christians; the Synagogue of the Satan that aggravated greatly the difficulties of the genuine elements of the New Man in that department of his work, the "taking out from among the Gentiles a people for the Spirit’s Name." Still, out of the evil of these sects some good was extracted. They became a numerous and powerful political party, which eventually acquired sufficient strength to contend with the pagan party sword in hand and to expel it from "the heaven" of the Roman world. While they had denied the Spirit’s name and faith by their traditions, they still contended against the idolatry of the Gentiles; and in this contention they were, doubtless, very successful. The Christadelphians or true believers, and the heretics called Christians combined were too much for the heathen in their argument against their gods, and the worship with which they honored them; so that the New Man, notwithstanding all the discouragements which afflicted him on the right hand and on the left, still went on "conquering" under this second seal "that he might conquer" under the sixth, when his brethren and fellow servants who were to be slain should be filled up.

Now these Nikolaitan Heretics who were defiling the temple of the Deity with their traditions, were exhorted at this period to "repent; or else," said the Spirit, "I will come unto thee suddenly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth" (ii. 16). Hence the Spirit had a controversy with them as well as with the heathen populace, priests, and civil, and imperial rulers. He will not permit His name, His faith, and His faithful and true ones to be disregarded, denied, tormented, and destroyed with impunity. Nemo me impune lacessit, no one provokes me without punishment, is the Spirit’s maxim with respect to his holy things. Retribution had therefore accumulated within the past eighty years upon the heads of two classes of offenders -- upon the Roman people and government; and upon the sectarian or Pergamian apostates, who were neither pagan, Jew nor christadelphian; but, like our modern "names and denominations," Balaamite and Nikolaitan blasphemers of the truth yet "christians" so-called.

The retribution threatened against these apostatizing professors of christianity was that the Spirit would fight with them, and that the weapon he would wield against them would be "the sword of his mouth." That is, he would command a sword to be unsheathed against them. Such a sword would consist in something more practical and material than reason and testimony. These were fast becoming to them, what their brethren in modern times affirm the word of the Deity to be now, "a dead-letter." Argument by the Spirit through the Angel-elderships of the Ecclesias had been exhausted; so that appeals to their intelligence being fruitless, it remained only to treat them as heathen men and publicans -- mere creatures of sensation, brutish as the beasts that perish.

The sword, then, that was suspended over them was a sword of retribution, which, on smiting them, would also smite the heathen populace and its rulers, and redden society with its own blood. That this is the kind of sword "signified" by the Spirit’s words, will appear from the use of the phrase in Apoc. xix. 15 -- "Out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword that with it he might smite the nations;" and in verse 20, "The remnant were slain with the sword of him sitting upon the horse, which sword proceedeth out of his mouth;" and the blood of those slain flowed to the horse-bridles of them who inflicted the vengeance.

"Repent," metanoeson, change your minds, "or else I will come unto thee suddenly, and fight with thee." But instead of such repentance as this, they hardened their hearts, and went on from bad to worse, until the patience and longsuffering of the Deity being exhausted, the Lamb opened suddenly the Second Seal, and a fiery red condition of society became the characteristic of the "Spirit of the Heavens" that ruled the passing hour.