Horae Apocalypticae - Illustrative Materials For Pagan Rome

Illustrative Materials For Pagan Rome

For secular history, Reverend Elliott relied upon Edward Gibbon. The link between history and Revelation was shown by illustrations of coins, medals, antiquities and inscriptions from the catacombs, as well as by quotations from classical authors. He rejected George Stanley Faber's attribution of the four horsemen to the military empires of Babylon, Persia, Macedonia and Rome as well as Rev. Dr. Alexander Keith's suggestion they were primitive Christianity, Islam, Popery and Jacobin Atheism. Equally, he rejected Joseph Mede's idea that the rider on the white horse was Christ. He was sure John referred to earthly events, not abstractions. He described how the Romans used emblems and badges as representations of corporate bodies. The resulting emblems were:-

• the first white horse and rider with a bow represented the virtuous emperor riding off to war. He carried a bow because he was Nerva, a Cretan.
• the second red horse and rider with a sword told of a time of civil war and martial despotism summed up in the ruling motto, "enrich the soldiery; despise the people."
• the third black horse and rider with a balance scale represented a time of unjust taxation whereby the producing provinces of the empire were robbed to satisfy the legions and to provide handouts for the populace of Rome. Economic depression resulted, but no famine. The words used in Revelation are a mocking reference to the sort of laws which were supposed to guarantee fair dealing but were, in reality, merely "records of the crime."
• the fourth pale horse bore a rider called Death, the word used as in the expression, The Black Death. This took the story to 292CE.
• the fifth vision was the altar-court of the apocalyptic temple where the souls of Christ's faithful martyrs cried, "How long?" This was the Diocletian persecution. The only sacrifice left for Christians to make was of themselves. The martyrs remaining to be slain would be killed in the reign of antichrist, following the replacement of the Roman empire by the ten kingdoms.
• in the sixth unsealing, a complete breakdown of the natural world occurred from which rich and poor flee in terror. No earthly foe caused their panic. Reverend Elliott said the sixth unsealing was the political revolution caused by Constantine's adoption of Christianity as state religion (the Milan decree of 313). He accepted that the language used in Revelation sounded like a reference to the Great Day of Yahweh rather than an earthly political change. But, he said, this could not be so, else the story must end at that point. This was a glimpse of the real end yet to come. In Elliott's scheme, the sealing of the righteous remnant and the worship with palms were included as part of this sixth unsealing.