White Horse Rider of Revelation 19

Non Pre-Millennials with an at all face value understanding of the chronology of Revelation have to conclude that Revelation 19 does not depict the Parousia and thus this White Horse Rider isn’t exactly Jesus.

A lot of things said about Him are also said about Jesus elsewhere, but that’s in the context of how Jesus is the beginning of the fulfillment of Humanity's Destiny, and how He gave His Authority to His Faithful Saints.  

The White Horseman cna be viewed as Jesus in the sense of Jesus working through His Ekklesia.

He is Faithful and True to His Father and we strive to be Faithful and True to Him.

The Sword that comes out the Mouth of Jesus in Chapter 1 and this Rider in Chapter 19 is the Sword of The Spirit of Ephesians 6:17, the Word(Rhema) of God. When the Armies of The Beast are killed by this Sword I don’t believe it refers to the physical deaths of bodies but how the Word of God is killing their old selves to begin the process of Spiritual Rebirth.

The Name of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords being written on his Vesture can be interpreted as not his own name but the name of who he’s serving.  That said, given the Kingship of all Believers Doctrine, that too can be a title Jesus Shares with His Faithful in some sense.

Isaiah 63:16 depicts Israel as a Horse and Zechariah 10:3 depicts Judah as a Horse.

At least two things said about this Rider are references back to the Promises to the Overcomers in Chapter 2, the one to Pergamon in verse 17 and the one to Thyatira in verses 26-28.  The Overcomer promises I’ve always viewed as the least actually specific to the Ekklesia at hand, every Overcomer can expect to benefit from all 7 of those Promises, each one is tied to a specific Ekklesia in Chapters 2-3 for thematic reasons.  A third Overcomer promise could also be relevant to Revelation 19’s Horseman and that’s the one to Philadelphia where the topic of Names is again relevant.

Revelation 6:2 and 19:11 have more in common than just the idea of a White Horse and someone riding it, a lot of language is repeated verbatim, the only real difference is the weapon the Rider wields. I have a prior post arguing the Revelation 2 White Horseman is Smyrna.  And that could still be the case here, but the change in Weapon has me looking to the other Ekklesia with nothing bad said about them.

The only time the word “word” is used in Revelation 2-3 is twice in the message to Philadelphia in Chapter 3 verse 8 and 10.  There are also only two verses where the words “word” and “name” appear twice in the same verse, Revelation 2:8 and 19:13.  I do think those verses relate to one another, 

Also the Revelation 19 White Horseman already has a Crown while the Revelation 6 White Horseman is given one, just the difference in the Crown references for Smyrna and Philadelphia.  Now the Revelation 19 Crowns are Diadems rather than Stpehanos, but the difference between those Greek words appears to be that Diadem is more specific, every Diadem is also a Stephanos.

Since Philadelphia is the Revelation Ekklesia who’s origins we arguably know the least about, maybe it was a daughter of Smyrna to begin with.  

Heaven being Opened in 19:11 is an idiom just like heaven being Shut in Revelation 11:6 was, it's an idiom Scripture sometimes uses for Rain.  

Through out Revelation "Them that Dwell in Heaven" is not refer to a different location in the Universe then "them that Dwell on Earth", it's about a state of mind, it's about Believers being Citizens of the King of Heaven rather then the Kingdoms of this World.  And it's the same with the Armies of Heaven in Chapter 19 verse 14, in the fact the words "which were" in the KJV aren't even in the original Greek.

So no I don't think these verses are about anyone traveling through a Stargate.

I’ve been more Amillennial the entire time I’ve been calling myself Post Millennial.

All because Amillennialism has a branding problem. 

I started this Blog under the mistaken impression that all Amillennials were also Full Preterists, but I now know there is actually no overlap between them.  Amillennials absolutely expected a still yet future Bodily Resurrection of The Dead.

Or well that’s the impression I get from the Facebook Groups I’m in.  Wikipedia says Perfect Amillennialism rejects a Bodily Resurrection, and still even connected Imperfect Amillennials to heretical views like those of Cerinthus as well as the view that the First Resurrection and Second Resurrection happen at the same time.  But Wikipedia has a limited understanding of many things. 

The A- prefix implies they don't believe in any Millennium, but that’s only what the Millennium is to Pre Millennials and sometimes also Post Millennials.  They actually more so then Post Millennials believe in the Millennium being fulfilled in the Church Age.

Amillennials are Post Millennial in that they believe the Parousia happens after the Millennium, and Post Millennials are Amillennial in that they disagree with Premillennialism on the Millennium involving Christ physically ruling on Earth. So the difference between them isn’t defined by the terms themselves really.

I do believe the Millennium being a Thousand year time period is literal, but that is equally as atypical for Amillennialism as it is for Postmillennialism.  Holding that view while being not Premillennial is as far as I currently know unique to me.

The only thing that ends when the Millennium expires is Satan’s Imprisonment, his attempt to destroy the Camp of the Saints and Beloved City is destined to fail. And with the help of Inspiring Philosophy’s video on Biblical Time (who is Post Millennial) I can easily argue more time passes between Satan being let loose and his being cast into the Lake of Fire then it at first appears on a casual reading.

Amillennials are sometimes Idealists (which I ultimately am not but borrow some elements from) but also sometimes Partial Preterists or Historicists, which both apply to my view in some ways.

Postmillennials are like Premillennials in how many of their errors come from taking passages about New Jerusalem and the New Heaven and New Earth applying them to the Millennium.  Revelation 20 depicts a Camp of Saints during this period, representing them as a set apart camp not as ruling the world politically. 1 Corinthians 15:22-28 places the Subduing of his enemies after the Parousia. The Olivet Discourse and Thessalonian Epistles also depict the Parousia happening to a world far from perfected.

If He returns to a full Christianized world why is He returning as a “Thief in the Night” to those not prepared? 

Postmillennials will also cite the same passages I cite to prove Universal Salvation, but that’s what I believe fully happened at the Parousia not before. They also The Lord’s Prayer, what we are doing in that Prayer is asking for The Kingdom to Come, it is done by The Father’s Will not ours.

The Great Commission is already accomplished, The Gospel has been Published in every nation.  Our mandate was to be a Witness and teach the Nations not to take them over. Matthew 28:19 says to “teach all nations” in the correct translations not “make disciples”.  Even with the "make disciples" translation that would just mean there being disciples from all nations, not the nations in their entirety.

Bible Prophecy indisputably predicts a time when the Entire World will be converted to Christ, the disagreement is if that happens before or after the Second Coming.  Every account of the Second Coming depicts a world still not perfected.

I do believe we have a mandate to strive to make the current better as much as we can.  Those are things we are told to do regardless of what our Eschatology is. But we will not be able to make the world Perfect before Jesus Comes Back.  I believe we are principally supposed to lead by example, not by taking the reins of power.  We are to be Separatist Anarchists not Revolutionaries.

Postmillennials acting like only their view believe The Church will succeed is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what The Church's mission is.  Our Goal is to Be a Witness, not to take over the world.  

I have no innate expectation about whether things will get better or worse before the end from where we are now.  But I have Faith in the Victory of Christ.  

I still don’t like the term Amillennial, I like to define my views based on what I do believe in rather than what I don’t.  But academically that’s the situation I’m stuck in.

Volcano in Revelation 9?

When Revelation 9:2 says that the opening of the Abyss causes smoke like a great furnace to arise and darken the skies I can’t help but see that as a description of a Volcanic Eruption.

Now I know “Smoke of a Furnace” language is also how certain people try to argue Mt Sinai was a Volcano.  But in passages like Exodus 19:18,, Genesis 15:17 or Genesis 19:18 it’s not possible to interpret underground as the source of the Smoke, but that is heavily implied to be the source of the Smoke in Revelation 9. 

And I also can’t help but suspect Ancient Greek readers would have been reminded by this chapter of the mythology surrounding Mt Etna (the largest Volcano in the Mediterranean world), inside of which is imprisoned the monster Typhon and also the forge of Hephaestus a god who was cast down from Olympus.  

The last verse of Chapter 1 sets the stage that sometimes if not always in this book Stars represent Angels, so we have in Revelation 9:1 a Star falling from heaven and being given the Key to the Abyss which houses monsters including a King of those Monsters.

Maybe it wasn’t just Etna, maybe most known Volcanoes had similar mythological frameworks surrounding them and Etna’s is just one most well remembered?

In my desire to place as much of Revelation 6-19 in Late Antiquity as possible the most significant Volcanic Eruption is the one that happened in AD 536 causing the major climate issues of the next few years.  The main culprit for that Eruption is far away from the Biblical World, but other Eruptions seem to have possibly also happened the same year including another Eruption of Mt Vesuvius.

But the Vesuvius Eruption of 472 is one that could be notable being close to 3 ½ years before the Western Roman Empire is popularly viewed to have ended.  

And Mt Etna had one in AD 252 just before the Valerian Persecution happened.

Should Satan’s release from the Abyss after the Millennium be expected to be represented in the visible world by the same kind of events?  Those with less strictly chronological readings of Revelation are included to see both releases of a villain from the Abyss as the same event being described in different ways, i.e. Apollyon and Satan are the same.

The Kingdom doesn’t end when the Millennium ends, the only event directly correlated to the Millennium ending is Satan being released from his prison.  His attempt to destroy the Camp of the Saints/Beloved City is doomed to fail.  

The YLT of Revelation 20:7 says “when the thousand years may be finished” which, along with looking at the Greek word for “Finished” or “Expired” used here, has me considering that during the year 1000 could also be a viable reading.

I have been preparing to consider an Idealist model where the Millennium begins with The Resurrection of Jesus which I lean towards placing in AD 30 and that Satan was imprisoned in the Abyss about that same time when or after Judas died (who Satan was indwelling within). In which case it’s fascinating that a Mt Etna Eruption happened in AD 1030.

Other models for The Millennium I’m considering could make worth noting for it’s end the possible Etna Eruption of 1169 or 1329 or 1381, the Mystery Eruptions of 1452/1453 and 1458, the Nuovo Eruption of 1538 or Etna Eruptions of 1536-37, the Vesuvius Eruption of 1631 and the Etna Eruption of 1669.

Mt Etna specifically is believed to have probably had Eruptions between 252 and 1030 that we simply don’t have the exact date documented for.  Maybe one of them was among the Eruptions of 536?  But Geologists seem to have concluded that about 300-450 was one of its more active periods.  Also 1669 was not its first 17th Century Eruption.  An Eruption has been dated to 1634 and in my Heraclius model 634 is a viable year to start the Millennium.  And a possible Eruption of 590-604 could fit one happening before the rise of Heraclius.

An Idealist could also, depending on how they view the relationship between Apollyon and The Beast, want to associate the Revelation 9 release of Apollyon BC with something soon before the Roman Empire “begins” as First Century Jews understood it.  

The Etna Eruptions of 140, 135, 126 and 122 BC can be seen as correlating to a time when the strife that would end the Republic and create the Caesars was beginning.  The 49 BC Eruption preceded Caesar becoming Dictator, the 44 BC Eruption was the year Caesar was killed and the reign of Antony and Octavian began. The 36-35 and 32 BC Eruptions could be seen as heralding Octavian’s Victor at Actium.  Octavian aka Augustus’s deification of himself was largely as an incarnation of Apollo, a name Apollyon can be easily linked to.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=d825d5be337c890b5c7d05d52e313e403769dcc8

Papacy obsessed Protestants really want to have it both ways

 The foundation of identifying the Papacy with whatever term you want to use for the Big Bad Villain of Bible Prophecy is the argument that the “Temple of God” in II Thessalonians 2 is The Church just as it is every other time Paul uses that phrase in his Epistles.  What makes The Church The Temple of God is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Saints.

That means the “Man of Sin” the “Son of Perdition” is operating from within The True Authentic Church, not leading a false Church.  Paul didn't say a counterfeit Temple of God, he said the actual Temple of God. If only Protestants are real Christians then no The Pope isn't sitting in The Temple of God.

But they also want to deny that any Non Protestants can qualify as True Christians.  Now on my other Blog I already laid out the reasons I oppose denying that the Christians I disagree with are true Believers.  There is no New Testament promise that genuine believers will be perfect and never mistaken on doctrine.  The Book of Revelation’s entire framing device is a message to Seven Churches in Asia that are all over the place in how good they are, for two of them nothing good is said about them and for both their issues are today Protestant ones fare more than Catholic.

I agree with the gist of the above II Thessalonians 2 argument. I ultimately view it as about more than just the Pope but all Monoepsicopal Church Hierarchy as well as Civil Christian Monarchy.  But I do have a post on this Blog that does zero in on some specifically Papal application of the Prophecy.

Futurists are the ones who invented the idea of insisting all the Villains of various Bible Prophecies are a single “Antichrist”.  The Beast of Revelation I can’t see being the Papacy for a number of reasons big and small I'm not gonna get into here.

What is truly Absurd is thinking you can make the Popes the “Antichrist” of the Johannine Epistles.

The Anti prefix in Greek has precedent for being used with both the “in place of” and “opposed to” meanings.  But the Context in these Epistles clearly intends the “opposed to” meaning, an Antichrist heresy is always defined by what they say Jesus is not never what they claim they are.

Those denials are

Denying that Jesus is The Christ.

Denying the relationship of the Father and the Son.

Denying that Jesus came in The Flesh.

You can’t accuse the Papacy of denying any of those things, not without constructing hyper specific versions of what those doctrines mean to force it so only Protestants truly believe them.  All of these Aspects of Who Jesus was are affirmed by the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Chalcedonian Confession and the so-called Athanasian Creed, all Creeds that most Catholics will call you Heretic for not accepting.

The original context of these Epistles I believe was about dealing with the Germ of what would become Marcionism and Gnosticism.  The scholarly term is Docetism. 

Do the Catholics believe some things that I think could become a Gateway Drug to Docetism like the Beatific vision of Pope Benedict XII?  Yes.  But they haven’t crossed that line yet.

Day-Year theory Debunked

This theory is pretty much vital to Historicism as traditionally understood, that model largely can't work without it.

The cited Biblical precedent comes from Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6.  In both cases a literal period of days did happen.  Numbers connected the 40 days of spying to the 40 years in the wilderness.  And Ezekiel is told to do something for a period of days to represent a period of years.

This is not consistent with how the theory gets applied to the numbers in Daniel and Revelation.  Neither verse justifies saying when God predicts a period of days will happen it really means years.

And it is 42 Months that Revelation 13 defines the reign of The Beast as lasting, as well as the Holy City trodden under foot of The Gentiles in Revelation 11.

There is a third precedent some will embarrass themselves by citing and that's Daniel 9.  No concept of Days as Symbolic of Years has anything to do with there 70 Weeks of Daniel 9.  

In the Hebrew mind Weeks came in more then just days, Exodus 23:10-11 and Leviticus 25-27 lays out that there also Weeks of Years, Nehemiah 10:31 shows they were on people's minds at the time of the return from Captivity.  

The 70 Weeks Prophecy says nothing in it's context about days but a lot about years.  It's starts with Daniel noticing that the 70 years of Captivity will be ending soon.  Jeremiah 34:13-14 suggests part of the reason the captivity was 70 years was because for 70 Weeks of years they failed to keep the Sabbatical Year, and Daniel 9:2 tells us Jeremiah is the Prophet Daniel had just been reading.

Partial Preterism?

Eschatological positions like Partial Preterism have a branding problem in terms of what they are called. It’s very easy for a Full Preterists to just off Vibes convince people that the only true Preterism is Full Preterism and the Partial position is just a fence sitting compromise.

However if you take the Chronology of The Book of Revelation even mildly at face value there is going to be a period of at least a Thousand Years where much of it is already fulfilled but not the very end of it yet.  And with the Help of IP’s explanation of Biblical Time I can argue more time separates the end of the Millennium from the Final Resurrection then you would at first assume. 

The desire of Full Preterists to say you’re a Futurist so long as you believe any Prophecy is still yet future, especially the Parousia itself, sounds reasonable on paper.  But speaking as a former Futurist, what Futurism is as an ideology, what drives the Futurist mind isn’t the Parousia itself, it is about obsessing over everything that’s supposed to happen before the Parousia, before The Millennium starts, and looking for signs of those things preparing to happen in the near future rather than the distant past. 

In a way it’s parallel to the branding issue Mid-Trib has, the Rapture timing position I held when I was a Futurist.  It’s easy to dismiss that as a mere compromise and see the real Debate as between Pre and Post.  But I wasn't’ Mid-Trib' because I desired to compromise on anything, I took that position because of my very strong positive conclusions about what certain Scriptures said.  

Actually a lot of what I’m struggling with while forming my new Post-Millennial Eschatology is how I still see a lot of the language of key Parousia passages outside Revelation happening within Revelation in Chapters 11-14 before the Bowls of Wrath.  The Last Trumpet, the Rapture of the Man-Child and the Son of Man on a Cloud.  The word Parousia doesn’t appear in Revelation at all but those context clues are how we refute Pretibbers on their claims that the Parousia of Matthew 25 and 1 Thessalonians 4 aren’t the same event, I believe Paul was basically quoting the Olivet Discourse in that chapter.

A core aspect of my rejection of Post-Trib is something still important to my new Non-Premillennial Eschatology, and that is how I don't view the actions of the Rider on the White Horse in Revelation 19 as the Parousia.  But when I was a Futurist I was at least still open to that Rider being Jesus because I viewed the Parousia as having happened earlier.  Now I’m firmly viewing him as being the Church and the same White Horseman as Revelation 6.

I’m different from most Partial Preterists in that my view is not focused on AD 70 at all.  I view Revelation 13-19 as having happened over a thousand years ago but the writing of Revelation I place in the time of Hadrian.

Some might say that makes me more Historicist then Preterist.  But I reject the Day=Year theory, so each reference to 1260 Days or 42 Months I believe refers to about 3 and Half years not over a Thousand and that Revelation 13-19 happens over the course of a few decades.  I just haven’t made up my mind exactly when to place them yet.

I do lean towards a very Historicist Understanding of the Four Horsemen and maybe even the rest of the Seals and Trumpets.  And I agree with the Historicist position that the Temple of God in II Thessalonians 2 is The Church, but I generally don’t see that as about just The Pope but all Episcopal Polity and Christian Monarchy.

Don’t attack Pretribulationism if you aren’t even a Futurist

Because the Pre-Trib Rapture has become very much the face of Futurism as a whole, you’ll see a lot of people who aren't Futurists mock it in the same way Posttribulationists do.

An internal debate among Futurists technically shouldn’t concern us at all.  But the thing I noticed back when I was still a Mid-Trib Futurist and still observe today is that when you break down the specific matters of Scriptural Interpretation that Pre-Trib and Post-Trib (and Mid-Trib) Futurists disagree on, all non Futurists are in agreement with the Pre-Tribbers over Post-Tribbers on something.

The reason Pre-Trib is the worst position to take within the framework of Premillennial Futurism is because of the things that Matthew 25 and II Thessalonians 2 clearly and unambiguously place before The Parousia/Rapture. 

However if you are a Premillennial Historicist or non Premillennial of either the Partial Preterist or Historicist variety then you probably believe all of those things have already happened.  (I believe the Great Tribulation was various Persecutions the Church has already endured, the Abomination of Desolation was Hadrian’s Idol, there has been more than one Apostasy and the “Man of Sin in the Temple of God” is Monarchy within The Church.) 

So we very much can be and sometimes are functionally in agreement with Pre-Tribbers on Imminence. However I definitely agree with Post-Tribbers over Pre-Tribbers on what the Parousia/Rapture is and will look like. It’s not going to look to non Believers like just a bunch of people vanishing, everyone will see The Son of Man coming in The Clouds.

Full Preterists (and some Partial Preterists who focus on AD 70) however are more like Pre-Tribbers in what they think The Rapture is, they very much believe in a Secret Rapture, that Jesus returned but every eye did NOT see Him.

The AD 70 fixation also creates agreement with the strictest definition of what Pre-Trib means, the events in Josephus Wars Book 6 Chapter 5, The Yossipon and Tacitus that they identify with being the fulfilment of 1 Thessalonians 4 happened in 66 or 67 AD, before or at the start of the 7 year period, 3 to 4 years before any of the events they consider identifying with The Abomination of Desolation.  All the events that the above cited chapters place before the Parousia they place after it just like Pre-Tribbers do.

Google’s annoying AI Review doesn't know this though, I google “Rapture AD 67” and it says no one places The Rapture that year but Preterists places it in 70.  It shows how stupid Generative AI is, it’s incapable of investigating the details of what it’s talking about beyond the surface level.  I discovered this when I was trying to refined websites where Full Preterists try to identify The Rapture Trumpet with what happened when Nero tried to cut through the Isthmus in Achaia.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen any belief Strawmanned by people who claim to have actually held it at one time more than the Pre-Trib Rapture.  When I see someone say things like “I didn’t make plans for the future” I don’t believe them, either they never really understood the Eschatology they claimed to uphold or they are lying now.  I have known lots of serious Pre-Trib believers, none of them act like that.  Being prepared for it to happen at any moment doesn't mean being unprepared for it not happen, the smart thing is objectively to be prepared for either.  Just like being prepared in case you Die unexpectedly.

But it’s the former Pre-Tribbers who are now no longer Believers at all who most annoy me, because they talk about being scared of it.  Not scared of being “Left Behind”, scared of being Raptured. If you were thinking of The Rapture as basically the same thing as dying then you never understood The Gospel, The Rapture is The Resurrection, it’s Salvation from Death, it’s not an End but a New Beginning.. If you didn’t view The Rapture definitionally as a Happy Ending you didn’t truly Believe in It, you only believed certain things about it.

But given how these bad understandings of The Rapture were held by people raised in the Belief, the blame I would say goes to their parents who clearly taught it badly.

And no the Great Commission does NOT say "Make disciples of all Nations" that's a Mistranslation.  The Gospel has been published in every Nations.  Revelation 20 depicts the Kingdom as still a Set Apart Camp when the final Resurrection happens.

The Author of the book Victorious Eschatology in the YT videos from him I watched years ago very explicitly agrees with Imminence in his discussion of Revelation 20.  There are several aspects to his approach I disagree with however.  He also separates the Matthew 25 Parousia from the I Thessalonians 4 Parousia the same way Pretibbers do.