Revelation: - Knights of Columbus, Supreme Council

The Son, too, receives the honor of all God’s creatures, the “living
creatures,” the elders, the angels, and finally “every creature in heaven and on
earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein” (v. 13). This is the
pic ture of the glorified Son of God set above every creature with which we are
familiar from the Epistles to the Hebrews, Colossians, Ephesians, etc.
Semitic Structure
All this has been preparatory to the beginning of the revelation
symbolized under the breaking of the seven seals. We should note the outline
that John follows through the next six chapters. The first four seals will be
broken at once, and will together make up one picture. Then the fifth and
sixth seals will be broken, together making up one picture. Then there will be
some intermediate material leading final ly into the breaking of the seventh
seal. The seventh seal, in turn, is really the introduction to the seven trumpets
that follow. The seven trumpets more or less repeat the revelation of the seven
seals, though they present it more from God’s standpoint. Again the same
outline is followed. First four trumpets will be sounded, making one unified
impression. Then the fifth and sixth trumpets, together giving one
impression. After this, another series of intermediate visions, lead ing finally
into the last of the trumpets.
Following this complicated and repetitious scheme John preserves unity
in his work, interlocks the various parts together, and at the same time
develops his themes. The development, however, is not in a strictly logical
fashion as we are familiar with in Western writing. It is, rather, a product of
the Semitic mind, which runs through the whole picture again and again (as
the seven letters, the seven seals and the seven trumpets essentially tell the
same thing), each time emphasizing one or another aspect of the whole. This
is the style in which the prophetic books of the Old Testament are written.
Forgetting it, and trying to interpret the Apocalypse as though it had been
written by one of us, is another source of the frequent mis-interpretations
given this book.
The Seals
The first four seals (6:1-8) are unified by their common image, “the four
horsemen of the Apocalypse.” This vision has been borrowed from Zechariah
6:1-5. The four horsemen together add up to war, strife, pestilence, and death,
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