One of the SEVEN seals.—“Each seal as it was loosed permitted the scroll as a whole to open a little wider, and a little wider, thus permitting ‘the mystery of God’ to be a little more clearly discerned.”—Z. '97-257.
And I heard [as it were the noise of thunder].—The roar of a Lion.
One of the four beasts.—Justice, typified by the Lion.—Rev. 4:7.
Saying, AS IT WERE THE NOISE OF THUNDER, Come and see.—Come and see Infinite Justice permitting one of the greatest acts of injustice ever perpetrated.
6:2. And I saw.—John beheld in vision the first strange and wonderful feature of the Divine Plan for the permission of evil as it related to epochs of the Church beyond his own epoch—that of Smyrna.
And behold a white horse.—The doctrines, teachings of the Lord and the Apostles recognized as the one and only rule of faith and practice of God's Church.
And he that sat on him.—The Bishop of Rome, the embryo Pope, the personal representative of Satan.
Had a bow.—“They bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, saith the Lord.”—Jer. 9:3.
And a crown.—Great honor and authority in the Church.
Was given unto him.—“Under the reign of Constantine (who murdered his own son in the same year in which he convened the Council of Nice) the opposition of the empire to Christianity gave way to favor, and the Imperial Pontifex Maximus became the patron of the professed but really apostate Church of Christ; and, taking her by the hand, he assisted her to a place of popularity and splendor from which she was able afterward, as the imperial power grew weak, to put her own representatives upon the religious throne of the world as Chief Religious Ruler—Pontifex Maximus.”—B. 290.