Read with Me
Revelation 6:3-4 (NET)
Then when the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come!” And another horse, fiery red, came out, and the one who rode it was granted permission to take peace from the earth, so that people would butcher one another, and he was given a huge sword.
Listen with Me
The breaking of the second seal on the scroll of God’s plans to avenge the persecution of His people calls forth the second of “the four horsemen of the apocalypse”. This rider sits on a fiery red horse and is given a huge sword. The fact that this rider was given authority by God to take peace from the earth indicates that this represents warfare which will spread throughout the Roman Empire.
One of the reasons given for the persecution of the Christians was that they were “atheists”, refusing to worship the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon. The fear was that this could bring disaster upon the empire: war, famine, and disease. The irony is that the persecution of God’s people was going to result in precisely those things being released upon the empire, not from Mars or Jupiter, which were false gods without existence and thus without power, but from the hand of the one true God.
The Roman Empire was massive, and the emperor’s hold on the frontiers was tenuous at times, held in place only by small forces of soldiers who brutally enforced the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. The leaders of the empire understood very well that any unrest that was allowed or any incursion that succeeded in invading the fringes of the empire would have a domino effect that could cause the whole thing to collapse. And over the next decades and centuries, rebellions and wars began to be unleashed that chipped away at the edges of the Empire, driving closer and closer to Rome, and ultimately resulted in the fall of the power structure itself. Thus the persecution of God’s people resulted in the rise of the very evil that the emperor was trying to avoid.
Pray with Me
Father, I can see a clear lesson here for despots, not only through history, but in our time as well. The only way for these rulers to maintain their control over people, since they don’t hold power by the will of the people, is by suppression and force. And they often lean most heavily on Your people since our first allegiance is not to the state or its leaders, but to You. They fear disaster if that “disloyalty” is allowed to spread and grow. But, as this Scripture clearly demonstrates, by persecuting your people, which You take as persecution of Yourself (Acts 9:4-5), they are unwittingly unleashing the very disaster that they are trying to prevent, not rebellion by Your people, who are instructed to be good citizens to every possible extent, but direct opposition from Your own hand. And if those leaders don’t repent, Your actions and opposition to them will bring disaster and ultimately a complete overthrow of their power and authority. Help us all, Lord, to truly be the best citizens that we can be, realizing that you are the King of kings and Lord of lords, and that You are paying attention to the actions and even the thoughts of those in positions of authority, and that You will act powerfully on behalf of Your people. Amen.