Thumbnail image

Last Updated on : Saturday, November 22, 2014

 


sp

DOWNLOAD EUREKA volumes in PDF: Eureka downloads page

Eureka vol. 1 TOC | Eureka vol. 2 TOC | Eureka vol 3 TOC

Previous section | Next section

 

Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 6

Section 1 Subsection 2.2

The Rider and the Bow


 
spacer

 

But John not only saw the coming of this "most happy and prosperous period" in the color of the horse, but he saw a rider upon him. The rider of a horse is one who governs, controls, influences him in all his movements. He is active, while the horse is passive and subject to his will. The Roman horse, or people, in this first seal-period, were to be ridden, or subjected to certain activities, which would result in such a consummation as was indicated by other elements of the figuration. The rider was "the spirit of the heaven" whose mission was conquest. He gave energy to a certain class of activities, by which they were prosperously advanced, until at length they overcame all obstacles. He was not therefore an emperor, nor a succession of emperors, wreathed or diademed; but a class of spirit-agencies to be coronally wreathed when their triumph over all that hindered was complete.

A rider with any thing remarkable in his hand would naturally attract a beholder’s attention, and fix it upon himself and the instrument he bore. John therefore not only notes the rider, but tells us that "he had a bow." Whatever the bow may signify, it was the rider’s badge or token, a mark by which he might be known. He was then, an archer, and his mission that of archery. But he had no "quiver full of arrows," nor any arrow at all; what use then a bow without arrows to shoot? But suppose he had been armed with arrows, what then? In that case the horse he rode should have been red, not white. He would have represented a bloodshedding agency, which would have been incompatible with the color pertaining to the first seal-period.

"He had a bow." John did not see him without a bow. The bow was inherently his. It was the weapon of his warfare which killed without shedding the blood, or piercing the bodies, of his enemies. It was the weapon with which "he went forth conquering that he might conquer." It was an invincible weapon in his hand; and he who used it though unharnessed with shield, breastplate, or helmet in the figuration, was fearless of heart, and able to quench all the fiery darts of his adversaries.

But this conquering archer’s bow, what did the Deity "signify" by the use of it in this symbolization? To get at the divine signification, we must consider the prophetic use of the symbol in other parts of the scripture; we may perhaps then be able to "see it."

In Zech. ix. 13, the Spirit says, "I will render double unto thee, O Zion, when I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim and raised up thy sons against the sons of Greece." In this a bow in the hand of the Spirit symbolizes a multitude, and that multitude the whole tribe of Judah. This will be a mighty bow, but not arrowless, like the same Spirit’s bow in the seal. The arrow of the Judah-bow, is Ephraim, or the ten tribes which fill the bow. Here is a bow and arrow of tremendous power when handled by the Spirit, who expelled the Dragon-power from the heaven in the period of the sixth seal. Of this Ephraim-arrow, which is Yahweh’s, it is said, "It shall go forth as the lightning," and "they shall devour."

Again, in Hab. iii. 9, the Spirit saith, "quite naked was made thy bow -- oaths of the tribes -- the word." Here bow stands for the word, which contains the covenanted promises of Deity concerning the tribes of Israel. In other words, bow represents that "certain word" which Paul preached as "the hope of Israel," and styled in the New Testament "the gospel of the kingdom." This is the Spirit’s Bow from which arrows are shot more killing than barbed steel.

Thus a multitude imbued with the word is an agency that might be fitly represented by a bow in the hand of the Spirit of the heaven riding the white horse of the seal. But then, how does he use this intelligent multitudinous bow? How does he shoot from it; and what are the arrows he shoots? We shall be able to "see" this by reference to other scriptural uses of the word bow.

In Psalm lxiv. it is written, "the workers of iniquity whet their tongue like a sword, and bow their arrows, bitter words, that they may shoot in secret at the perfect." In this the tongue is compared to a bow from which words are shot forth as arrows. Hence, a multitude may not only itself be a bow, but its tongues may be bowed or bent, to shoot forth doctrine or testimony, which, as an arrow in the vitals, shall put to death the enmity of the carnal mind, or "the thinking of the flesh," against the Deity. When such a multitude would deliver the testimony it held to be true, it would be drawing the bow and shooting at its adversaries the word of truth. This word would also be the arrow of their bow, as well as their sword; and whether regarded as an arrow or a sword, "living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. iv. 12).

But there is a remarkable instance of the use of the phrase drawing the bow, in the sense of proclaiming the truth, in Isa. lxvi. 19: thus, "I will send !hebrew! maihem of those that escape to the nations Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, drawers of the bow; Tubal and Javan, the coasts far off which have not heard my fame, nor seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations." "Yahweh gives the word, and great is the company of those who publish it" (Psa. lxviii. 11).

Translators of Isaiah have been much at a loss what to do with !hebrew! moshkai kesheth "drawers of the bow," in this text. Some have thought that moshkai should be rendered Meshech, called Moschi by the Greeks, as a proper name, seeing it is associated with Tubal as in other places. Boothroyd has so rendered it, and Lowth is inclined to it, as appears from his notes; but in the text he renders the phrase by the words "who draw the bow" in common with the English Version. But though it is true it may be literally rendered thus, the strictly literal sense does not apply in this place. "Who draw the bow," or "drawers of the bow," is a mode of warfare not at all more characteristic of Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, than of Tubal and Javan, of whom it is not affirmed. They all drew the bow in battle when the prophet wrote; and Tarshish at the present time is more famous for gunpowder and cannon balls than for shooting arrows from the bow.

The metaphorical, and not the literal, must be the sense of the words in this place. It should be rendered sounders of the truth, which is in agreement with what is affirmed of those sent saying, "and they shall declare my glory (or sound the truth in bowing, or bending, their tongue to shoot) among the nations." See note in Anatolia, p. 94.

[The book Anatolia, written by the Author of Eureka was later renamed The Exposition of Daniel. The comment referred to is found at the end of the book in Section 34 entitled: The Times of The Kingdom of Babylon and of Judah.]

From this text we derive then the idea of a multitude going forth with a bow to the nations, and in their use of it, declaring the truth, or their testimony, to them concerning the coming of Yahweh with his chariots like a whirlwind to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. Such is the style in which the spirit gives expression to "the deep things of Deity" in the holy writings of the prophets; and as the writings of the apostles are a revelation by the same spirit of the hidden mysteries of the prophetic scriptures, he continues therein to speak after his wonted manner; which is "not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the holy spirit teacheth, interpreting spiritual things by spiritual."

We conclude then that the spirit-symbols of the first seal, which are its "spiritual things," are scripturally interpreted by comparison with the "spiritual things" of the law and the testimony; for "the servants of the Deity" are instructed out of the law, and not out of learned and classical disquisitions on Greek and Roman Numismatics. The rider and his bow in the first seal, doubtless, symbolizes a like idea to that of the Spirit giving the word, and bowing or shooting it through a great company of believers to the world. This answers to the facts in the case as they obtained in the first, second, and third centuries; and as they will obtain again, when the Lamb appears upon Mount Zion with the 144,000 gathered unto him (xiv. 1; 2 Thess. ii. 1). A great company of obedient believers had been gathered together into "one body" by the labors of the apostles, which, in John’s apocalyptic epoch, had attained "to a perfect man" -- a man that could not be seen as an ordinary man by the eye of sense; but a man who could be seen, discerned, looked upon, as the seals can be seen, by the eye of the understanding enlightened by the divine testimony. This was the Spirit-Man who fought for conquest against Caesar as the power which hindered, that he might be taken out of the way. He began this good fight in Caesar’s empire on the fiftieth day after he was wounded in the heel by the serpent-power. Being healed of his wound, he went forth with his bow "conquering;" and in his prospering course, "pulling down strongholds, casting down reasonings, and every lofty conceit that exalted itself against the knowledge of the Deity, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (Eph. iv. 13; 2 Cor. x. 5). For about sixty years he had handled his bow with great dexterity, prowess, and effect; and had already witnessed the signal overthrow of the Jewish power, against which he had been practising his archery nearly forty years. But the fall of Jerusalem did not bring peace to him. His work was still to "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints," until the idolatrous superstition of which Caesar was the Chief Pontiff should be expelled from place and power in "the heaven" of the Roman Orb, or habitable earth. For upwards of thirty years he had been bleeding at every pore, "sweating great drops of blood," in his encounters with the Neros and Domitians of the Roman state. Still he went on conquering with his bow, subduing enemies with the truth, and transforming them into Eyes of the Living Ones, and his own faithful allies in the good fight of faith.

This perfect man of the Ephesian phasis of the "One Body" had thus for sixty years "borne, endured, and labored for the sake of the Spirit’s Name, and had not fainted" (ii. 3). He drew his bow against all adversaries, whether lying pretenders to apostleship, and Nicolaitans within; or the Jewish and Pagan denizens of the rayless darkness without. They were all the prey of his devouring bow, which spared neither age, sex, nor condition, admitted of no neutrality, knew no compromise, and tolerated only that which was indisputably true. This Spirit-Man, whose head was Christ, his members in particular, those whom he filled with spirit-gifts for the work of the ministry and edifying of the body; and his flesh and bones, the faithful in general (Eph. iv. 10-12; v. 30) -- this Spirit-Man, I say, was a real and formidable potential existence in the empire of the Goat’s Little Horn. He had made Felix tremble; he had almost persuaded king Agrippa to be a bowman with himself; and he had so alarmed Caesar, that this imperial pontiff of the state superstition commanded him to draw his bow no more in the name of Jesus. But to this mandate he paid no regard. The louder the LION of the forest roared, the louder the echoes of his voice above the battle’s din, and the grander the execution of his bow; so that according to Pliny’s letter to Trajan (see vol. I, ch. ii, sec. ii, 5C) in the early part of his reign, the number of the bowman’s victims was so great as to call for the serious consultation of the authorities; for, he says, "the contagion of the superstition hath spread not only through cities, but even villages and the country: ... the temples were almost desolate, the sacred solemnities long intermitted, and the sacrificial victims could scarcely find a purchaser." This roused the priests, who had their wealth by the craft "by law established," to infuriate official Rome to the deadliest ferocity against him. But "the great iron teeth, and brazen claws," of the Dragon could not devour and rend him to death. The two-edged sword of the magistrate was too dull fatally to disable this Bowman of the Seal. His "fellow-servants and brethren might be laid under the altar, weltering in their blood (see fifth seal); but the power of Rome was not equal to the subjugation of what Pliny styles "their sullen and obstinate inflexibility." They obeyed Christ before Caesar, whose gods and imperial image were their abomination; and his power, though "dreadful and terrible," too impotent to compel them to invoke.

While John was in Patmos, and recording ha eisi, the things which are, and anxiously awaiting the opening of the first seal, he was gratified with the apparition of this valiant archer, bow in hand, and bestriding the Roman world as its conquering rider, in a period of public prosperity and peace. This represented an existing fact, as we have seen, on the fall of Domitian, and before the death of John about A.D. 98. John "saw him" thus produced in vision; and doubtless, by spiritual discernment, recognized him as his ancient and familiar companion in arms. John knew that hitherto they had been successful in their warfare against Judaism and idolatry; but what of the future! -- what ha mellei ginesthai meta tauta, the things that shall come to pass after these, in relation to the archer? Shall his career of conquest be arrested? Shall the Dragon and his adherents break his bow, and silence his testimony; or shall he prove too strong for him, and hurl him like lightning from "the heaven" amid "the inhabiters of the earth and sea"? (xii. 12). This was an interesting inquiry for John and all the saints with him; for the issue of the cause for which they counted every thing but refuse was comprehended in this archer’s fate.

 

 


spacer
spacer
spacer

Eureka Diary -- reading plan for Eureka

spacer