1 The white horse
2 The red horse
3 The black horse
4 The pale horse
5 The martyrs
6 Anarchy
7 The fanfare of trumpets
As each of the first four seals are opened, a different colored horse and its rider is revealed. And yet, earlier in John’s Revelation (chapter 4) we see God seated on the throne in heaven, but also sovereign over earthly events. A paradox of power occurs as the Lamb ( Jesus) appears in chapter 6 and takes the scroll from God. This is a paradox because how can a lamb be powerful? And yet the Lamb not only snatches the scroll, he also breaks the seals, a privilege only for Kings. To further the paradox, especially as practiced by the less divine, the first horse and rider, white in color, is interpreted as good, representing either Jesus or the church going out, in victory, sharing the gospel. The time, however, eventually came when the church became a persecuting power, mutating to a second rider on a red horse with a sword in his hand. The paradox here is in how the first horse and rider is juxtaposed to the second, who represents a history in which the church turned on its own members. The crime of many who were killed was the “crime” of reading the Bible. For example, in the year 1215 Pope Innocent III issued a law commanding “that they shall be seized for trial and penalties, who engage in the translation of the sacred volumes, or who hold secret conventicles, or who assume the office of preaching without the authority of their superiors; against whom process shall be commenced, without any permission of appeal. ”4 Innocent “declared that as by the old law, the beast touching the holy mount was to be stoned to death, so simple and uneducated men were not to touch the Bible or venture to preach its doctrines.”5
Rather than promoting erroneous interpretations of this important book of the Bible, the key to interpreting Revelation is Jesus. This is Malcolm’s key interpretation as well. Similar to the way the first century had a difficult time interpreting the Messiah as someone meek and mild like Jesus, so do we have complexity in interpreting Revelation, the second coming of Jesus. What is described by the seals is similar to the signs of the end of the age as described by Jesus in Matthew 24. There will be wars, famines, and earthquakes (Matt 24:6–8); persecution (24:9–14); and the heavenly bodies will be shaken (Matt 24:29): “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn” (Matt 24:30). After the opening of the seven seals, the scroll can be read and we will find more detail, but this starts in chapter 8. The seven seals describe tribulation that is largely the result of human foibles (wars, famine, and persecution) but under the control of God. The fact that the seven seals are opened by Christ indicates his sovereignty over the future. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (Rev 22:13); he is sovereign from the beginning to the end of history, and everything in between.
Focus on Jesus in the book of Revelation should prevent militia and extremist groups because John’s vision indicates that these strange occurrences all occurred under the sovereignty of God. I think this is strange; after all, the Lamb is the most powerful one. Even if we do not understand the message of Revelation, the reader is obligated to give assent to God whose strange sovereignty lasts from the start to the finish. The Lamb’s enemies end up defeated and punished while the saints are vindicated and rewarded. The revelation ends with a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no more death, crying, or pain. The vision all along was for a different use of power in which a Lamb sits on the throne of heaven. God’s plan for the future of the world, especially as the apocalyptic vision is progressively revealed, is not to destroy, but to create. This revelation comes with the instructions to record the prophesy so that it can be used to encourage a struggling first–century church. In many ways, Malcolm fits this progressive apocalyptic vision–especially as Malcolm seeks to create rather than destroy.
This detailed review and interpretation of the seven seals is necessary for understanding Malcolm because so much of Malcolm’s public impact was either interpreted as creative or destructive. The verdict seemed to be in the eye of the beholder. Similar to the early church’s apocalyptic literature, how one interprets the end times of an empire often depended upon having power or not. On one hand, if you were invested in the power structures of the empire, of course apocalyptic realities were seen more as a horror movie. On the other hand, if you were marginalized or oppressed (like the early church), apocalyptic realities meant something else entirely. The oppressed longed for the toppling of the empire. For the marginalized and oppressed, the Apocalypse is actually a creative act.
Today, especially in our Western culture, it is difficult to be encouraged by apocalyptic worldviews. Malcolm’s genius in many ways represents the divide between how apocalyptic worldviews seek to encourage societies out of ruts and how modern–day society has a difficult time receiving such worldviews as constructive and creative. Of course, any society struggles with its own end; after all, who can really handle “extra-reality” judging our current reality? Our particular struggle in the Western world comes because we expect an empirical revelation full of complete and technical accuracy. We were the masters of such revelation, but now we are beginning to see Chinese and Indian children out achieving our own. Instead of being insecure, Malcolm is helpful to the Western worldview. Malcolm’s apocalyptic worldview entails judging the world according to extra–wordly or transcendent standards. In other words, instead of seeing others as a threat to our existence, why not simply understand that the world never stays the same?
Malcolm’s mission was in fact one of encouraging the church, but not in ways that she often wanted. Malcolm’s word of God revealed God as one who could transcend all of us and yet sit in a coffee shop and a bar, a God who could love us equally in Sunday morning worship and Friday night laughter. Consequently, Malcolm approaches God’s revelation without too much anxiety about whether he has gotten such revelation precisely correct. His mission is simply to make known that there is indeed a revelation from God.
This revelation often comes across as apocalyptic to those who cannot accept truth and reality as coming beyond self (and even Western culture). Malcolm’s vision is akin to the writer of Revelation who envisions four horsemen galloping through the desert on a horse with no name. But Malcolm accepts the judgments that are coming and tries his best to help us do so as well as he gleans what has been given to him in the poetic imagery of God who transcends us and yet drinks coffee with us.
Though the faith–minded might find comfort in my interpretation of Malcolm’s impact, there is also a challenge to us as well—namely, the imminent side of God (the One who drinks coffee with sinners) is not all there is to God. God is also transcendent. So, although the faith–minded may look for the seven signs of the Apocalypse as taking place in the order in which they appear in Revelation, there is little need to actually follow this order. To understand that God transcends us should actually take the pressure off. Belief in God alerts us to the fact that our interpretations of reality usually carry with them self-fulfilling prophecies that often end us in ditches rather than flourishing places. In other words, God keeps us honest between hope and despair. Malcolm irritates the faithminded just as he does the empirically-minded in that no one can be selfsufficient, really. In addition, for many faith–minded, Malcolm could never be their brother due to their never being able to accept his identity as a white, gay Episcopal priest. Keep in mind that Malcolm’s impact comes through his poetic, apocalyptic literary style that paints a picture of how God’s kingdom accepts a person wherever they are.
When Malcolm prays, “Are you running with me?” he prays to a Jesus who came to fulfill the promise that God made to Abraham that his descendents will be impossible to count. In fact, Malcolm’s message does not bring us a new revelation, but rather places in writing the same message that Jesus brought us, but does so in a wonderful and colorful literary style.
White Horse
In my first chapter I look at the first horseman