The Second Seal

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

The Second Seal (Revelation 6:3f)

The symbols of the Second Seal integrate perfectly with God's general use of the Number 2 throughout Scripture and Creation. The Sword, as the natural archetypal symbol of Division, manifests in the division of the Waters on the Second Day and again in the division of the Red Sea in the Second Book (Exodus). This all is a manifiestion of the meaning of the Number 2 as division, duality, reflection, image and so forth. Thus the Second Horseman is given a Sword as the symbol of the power to take peace away from the earth - meaning to cause war, i.e. civil division. The relation between the Sword and War is made explicit in Isaiah 2 when they shall "beat their swords into plowshares, and ... neither shall they learn war any more.

There is yet a deeper integration of the symbol of the Sword and the Number 2 that ultimately derives from the eternal nature of the Triune God. The Second Person - God the Son (Beyt KeyWord Ben) - is called the Word of God, and the Word in turn is called the Sword of the Spirit and is specifically identified as two-edged, as in the Logos Holograph (Hebrews 4:12 ):

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

The conceptual confluence is overwhelming. Even the word "WORD" is maximized four times above average on Spoke 2! The integration is utterly divine - descending from the very nature of God and the universally recognized geometric archetypal significance of the Number 2! Endless glory!

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