2. THE SECOND SEAL OPENED Revelation 6:3-4 3 And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, Come.--The language here is substantially the same as that used to describe the opening of the first seal. See notes on verse 1. 4 And another horse came forth, a red horse: and to him that sat thereon it was given to take peace from the earth,--Concerning see the horse notes on the significance of the term verse 2. The language of this seal indicates the same general idea as the first--it represents a period of war, though in some respects it is different in its results. If we were correct in the conclusion that the first symbol referred primarily to the Roman Empire, then this one should be applied in the same way. The reasoning on this point given under the first seal will apply here equally as well. The reader is referred to that. The word red would naturally suggest carnage--excessive bloodshed and disastrous war. This is confirmed by the expression "slay one another," found in the following verse. It is further confirmed by the words that the rider of the red horse was "to take peace from the earth." While the first seal indicated warfare, it was a successful period for the empire. Trajan's victories had extended Rome's borders and brought many weaker nations in subjection to its authority. It was a time of great prosperity and internal peace. The margin says "the peace" which implies that the peace they had was to be destroyed in the time indicated by the second seal. This conclusion is further sustained by the statement that peace was to be taken "from the earth." Since the symbol had to do with matters that would affect the church, and the church was scattered throughout the Roman Empire, the term "earth" meant that part of the world subject to Rome. and that they should slay one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.--This symbol represents internal strife; the fighting was to be among themselves. They were to kill each other. In this particular the warfare of this seal was very different from that of the first. To the rider here was given a great sword. This is the full and final proof that this seal refers to warfare. The rider of the white horse in Revelation 19:15 also had a sword, but it proceeded "out of his mouth," and could not therefore mean a literal sword, but his words. In the symbol of the second seal the great sword was "given unto him." This furnishes another reason why the rider in these seals does not refer to Christ. It is again suggested that the rider of the horse need not refer to any special emperor, but rather to the ruling power, whoever the ruler might be, for a period of time when the general facts stated may have found their counterpart in Roman history. If the preceding reasoning is correct, it would have to come after the time covered by the reigns of the "five good emperors." The two symbols are too clearly different to refer to the same period of time. Historians describe this period as one of almost continuous civil warfare. Sismondi's Fall of the. Roman Empire, Vol. 1, p. 36, says "With Commodus commenced the third and most calamitous period. It lasted ninety-two years, from 192 to 284. During that period thirty-two emperors and twenty-seven pretenders alternately hurled each other from the throne by incessant civil warfare. Ninety-two years of almost incessant civil warfare taught the world on what a frail foundation the virtue of the Antonines had placed the felicity of the empire." In the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, chapters IV to XII, Gibbon gives the history of this period in much detail. He shows that of these more than thirty emperors all were murdered except a very few. He also says there were nineteen pretenders in the reign of Gallienus who ruled from A.D. 260 to 268. Regarding this part of the period Gibbon says "Such were the barbarians, and such the tyrants, who, under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, dismembered the province, and reduced the empire to the lowest pitch of disgrace and ruin, from whence it seemed impossible that it should ever emerge." (Vol. I, p. 326.) No effort is here made to apply the symbol to the reign of any one emperor, such being unnecessary, but the general facts of that period, as history presents them, are such as fit the demands of the case. Certainly the rulers slew one another with the sword, and the peace and prosperity of the Roman Empire during the preceding century were taken away. This is all that is necessary to show that this symbol could refer to this period of Rome's civil warfare.