Who is the rider on the white horse? Study Revelation 6 with context, apologetic analysis, and cross-references.
Dr. Lucas D. Shallua Commentary · REVELATION 6 — THE SIX SEALS
Some identify him as Christ, and others as the Antichrist or as a symbol of conquest. This commentary favors the Antichrist or a conquering power, because the rider belongs to a series of judgments, appears at the call of a creature, and counterfeits Christ, who appears on a white horse in 19:11 with many crowns and a different character. Interpreters differ, and the view should be held with humility.
They are cries for justice addressed to God, and they ask Him, not themselves, to act, in line with Romans 12:19. The martyrs do not take revenge. They trust the holy and true Lord to judge, and their cry shows that God's justice matters. It does not conflict with praying for enemies, since the cry is for the final settling of accounts.
They are in heaven, under the altar, conscious and awaiting the completion of God's plan. This supports the teaching that believers who die go to be with the Lord, though they await the resurrection of the body.
The unrepentant say that the great day of wrath has come, and the sixth seal prepares for the wrath of the trumpets and bowls. Interpreters differ on whether the whole tribulation is wrath or whether wrath begins at a later point. This commentary views the tribulation as a period in which God's judgments increase, culminating in the bowls, and holds that the church will be spared from it.
The opening of the seals begins the judgments of the Lamb. The seals are the first of three series of seven judgments, the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls, and they unfold the events of the tribulation period according to the futurist view of this commentary. The first four seals are linked in the vision of four horsemen, a picture drawn from Zechariah 1 and 6, and they parallel the "beginning of birth pains" that Jesus described in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:4–8): false christs, wars, famines, and earthquakes. The fifth seal shows the martyrs and the sixth shows cosmic upheaval and the terror of the unrepentant. Between the sixth and seventh seals comes an interlude (chapter 7).
The pattern of the first four seals matches the Olivet Discourse closely, which shows that John's vision continues the teaching of Jesus. Jesus predicted false christs, wars, famines, and earthquakes as the beginning of birth pains. The historical record shows that such calamities occurred in the first century, including the famine in the reign of Claudius (Acts 11:28), and the wars and civil strife of AD 66–70, but this commentary understands the seals as including a future fulfillment. The prices in the third seal are consistent with the known prices of grain in the Roman world, in which a denarius was a typical day's wage, and in which wheat usually sold for much less than the amount specified. The cry of the martyrs reflects the real situation of persecuted Christians. Tacitus reports that Nero executed Christians in AD 64 with great cruelty, and the later Acts of the Martyrs record the sufferings of Christians in Asia.
This study preserves the hard questions, explanations, context, apologetic note, and references from Dr. Shallua's Commentary.