Had a bow.—“They bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, saith the Lord.”—Jer. 9:3. And a crown.—Great honor and authority in the Church. Was given unto him.—“Under the reign of Constantine (who murdered his own son in the same year in which he convened the Council of Nice) the opposition of the empire to Christianity gave way to favor, and the Imperial Pontifex Maximus became the patron of the professed but really apostate Church of Christ; and, taking her by the hand, he assisted her to a place of popularity and splendor from which she was able afterward, as the imperial power grew weak, to put her own representatives upon the religious throne of the world as Chief Religious Ruler—Pontifex Maximus.”—B. 290. And he went forth conquering, [and to conquer] AND HE CONQUERED.—Thus we see the apparent defeat of Infinite Justice in this first epoch. Apparently, God forsook His Church, having jeopardized all its interests by placing the power in the hands of a self‐seeking ecclesiastical system. But worse things are coming! 6:3. And when He had opened the second seal.—Revealing the second period of the history of the Antichrist. I heard the second beast.—Infinite Power. See Rev. 4:7. Say, Come and see.—Come and see Infinite Power consenting to a thing apparently in victorious opposition to it. 6:4. And I beheld and lo there went out another horse.—A creed‐horse, quite different from the Scriptures which it misrepresented. That was red.—The color of sin—imperfection. “Though your sins be as scarlet.”—Isa. 1:18. And power was given to him that sat thereon.—The same rider, the Antichrist. To take peace from the earth.—To embroil in controversy those who were under religious restraint—in other words, the entire professed church of God. And that they should kill one another.—Depose and destroy one another as teachers, by inveighing the Roman power against all offenders. And there was given unto him a great sword.—As the Lord has a great and powerful sword, the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Eph. 6:17), and as it is represented as coming out of His mouth, so the Papacy has a great and powerful sword, in opposition to the Sword of the Spirit, and it, too, comes out of Papacy’s mouth. [The word here is different from Rev. 1:16 and refers to the butcher knife—Gen. 22:6, 10.] “The pope (each pope in his turn) is the head of the false church, which is his body, even as Christ Jesus is the Head of the true Church, which is His Body. Since the head is the representative of the body, and its _mouth_ speaks for the body, we find, as we should expect, this feature of Antichrist prominently referred to in the Scriptures. In Daniel 7:8, 11, 25, and Rev. 13:5, 6, the mouth of Antichrist is brought specially to our notice as a leading characteristic.”—B. 304.