The Rider on the White Horse (chapter 6)

Through the Lamb's opening of the seals, the darkest book has become most clear — the book of the world's history, in its enigmatical, fearful and gloomy phenomena. The very fact that the book is sealed is a ray of light for us; the highest hand has shut it up, intending that it shall presently be opened. Another hopeful fact is that the Seals are seven, i.e., the riddle is a holy one, and when it reaches its final term it shall meet with a festal solution. The loosing of the very first seal sheds a joyful light over the whole dark history of the world. The Rider upon the white horse rides at the head of all the others. The mere fact that the train is one of horsemen calms our apprehensions; the horses denote the rapid movement of great phenomena of life or death; no one of these phenomena hangs stationary over the world. They all, in their riders, have their governors. Wild though the course of some may seem on earth, their management, their direction, their career, and their limit are fixed in Heaven. But at the head of all is the Rider on the white horse. He is the Prince; the rest are esquires. Thus, all apparently fatal events must serve His purposes, and those purposes are still redemption and its diffusion through the world — not yet judgment, as at His forthgoing in ch. xix. 11. The horse of the first Rider is white; holy and pure as heavenly light is the dynamical fundamental movement which governs all other and more conspicuous movements. The Rider is Christ; to Him, therefore, to His power, His rule, all subsequent facts are subject; not only the three riders, His servants, but also the facts of the fifth, sixth, and seventh seals, the latter of which embraces all items subsequent to its opening. His bow is the bow with the sure arrows of the word; His wreath or crown is the diadem of His principial victory over all the power of the world and of darkness, and when He, notwithstanding, again goes forth to conquer, it is in order to the necessary development and consummation of His principial conflict and victory in a grand succession of world-historical conflicts and victories. He has no need of many attributes; a leading attribute is this: that the three other riders are not before, but behind Him.

—John Peter Lange, The Book of Revelation, 1874, pp. 164f.