What then are we to do about our problems? We must learn to live with them until such time as God delivers us from them. We must pray for grace to endure them without murmuring. Problems patiently endured will work for our spiritual perfecting. They harm us only when we resist them or endure them unwillingly
A.W. Tozer

The Mysterious Horseman Mr X

The Mysterious Horseman Mr X

THE MYSTERIOUS HORSEMAN, MR. “X”

In the sixth chapter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:1), a gentleman comes trotting by who calls for some attention and recognition. You will find him in the second verse of chapter six; he is said to wear a crown, and he comes to “CONQUER.” Now a “conquering king” in the Bible is never a secondary or minor character. Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes, Caesar Augustus, and Alexander are the type of men whom the Bible mentions as conquerors. When the Holy Spirit, speaking through the absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures, says, “A crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering and to conquer,” you can be certain the man so described is a star in the production; he is first violinist in the orchestra, he is not playing right field on the diamond. Certainly a man of such prominence can be identified.

Now remembering our first chapter in Bible orientation, let us approach the subject of interpreting Revelation 6:2 seriously, carefully, and above all, with a reverent eye open to what the scriptures themselves SAY about this mysterious king on the white horse. Never forget that the final interpreter of the Bible is the Author Himself, and His method of interpretation is “scripture-withscripture.” Before any lexicons, systems, traditions, or “original Greek” are called upon, and before any scholar, bishop, priest, or commentator is dragged in for an opinion, let us see “what saith the scriptures?” The scriptures say plenty. They say so much, as a matter of fact, that “Mr. X” on the white horse is completely unhorsed in the description.

“Behold a white horse.” It is not hard to find another white horse in the same book–in Revelation 19:11 we find him, with a rider in the salle. The rider is described thoroughly; He is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The rider in Revelation 19:11 is called “Faithful and True.” He judges “in Righteousness,” and His name is called “The Word of God” (Rev. 19:13, John 1:1-3). He is “KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Rev. 19:16), and His armies are heavenly armies, and they are cloted in “the righteousness of the saints.” (Check Rev. 19:8,14.) In all this, no one has to lean on anything other than the scriptures themselves to get the “interpretation.” Nothing of an “extra-canonical” nature has to be resorted to in order to unravel the “hidden meaning.” What is written is clear. The rider of Revelation 19 is obviously the Lord Jesus Christ. The objections to the interpretation come only from those who are so ignorant of the contents of scripture that they fail to see the connection between the comparative verses. Concordances are published to remedy this defect in the reader, but what rejector of the word of God ever spent much time in a concordance?

Now, “scripture-with-scripture,” are the riders of the two white horses (Rev 6 and Rev 19) identical? They appear to be so. Unfortunately appearances are deceptive (John 7:24), and this is as scientific a statement as Millikan’s prize-winning statement on atomic structures. The wall appears to be solid, but it is not. The two riders on the two white horses appear to be identical, but are they? Here we have an opportunity to exercise our eyes and our minds on what is written, and determine from the scriptures alone the homogeneity of the two horsemen.

  1. The rider in Rev. 6 has a crown (vs. 2). The rider in Rev. 19 has many crowns (vs. 12).
  2. The rider in Rev. 6 has a bow, but no sword (vs The rider in Rev. 19 has a sword, but no bow (vs. 15).
  3. The rider in Rev. 6 is followed by war, famine, Death, and Hell (vs. 3-8).

The rider in Rev. 19 is followed by heavenly armies (Rev. 19:14) and 1000 years of peace on earth! (Rev. 20:1-6).

Conclusion? They are not the same rider.

This shows, in the clearest way possible, the difference between Bible-believing “Christian interpretation” of a passage, and the traditional method of Bible-corrupting interpretation. The Biblebeliever will take the time out to carefully examine every detail of a passage, believing that since he is reading the absolute word of God, it deserves careful and reverential attention. The Biblecorrupter, having assimilated 1900 years of perversion and putrefication, does not look for anything other than a general truth that will fall in line with the religious teaching of his own denomination or church. More than this, the corrupter will accuse the Bible-believer of “crass literalism” or “Bibliolatry” if he prayerfully and devotedly examines every detail of a passage. Can’t you see what the trouble is? The decline of Biblical Christianity has allowed a veritable galaxy of preachers, teachers, and scholars to take over the job of Bible exegesis with not one-out-of-ten of them believing that what they are reading is of any more importance than a means of making a living!

Why bother with “crowns” and “bows” and “fine linen”; after all, isn’t the whole thing symbolical? Is it not “highly figurative” and “apocalyptic” in its “IMAGERY”? Is it? Where did you get that idea from? Ah, I know! You got it by believing the ideas set forth by the “woman with the leaven,” of whom we spoke in Chapter One. God never told you it was “highly figurative.” You already “shot your wad” when you refused to identify the woman of Revelation 17,18. Now it is impossible for you to identify the white horseman of Revelation 6:2, for you have lost the key to interpretation, which is–believe what you read, as you find it, where it is.

The two horsemen are not the same. They are not the same because they are different. If two things are different, then they are not the same. One must resort to childish rudiments and fundamental maxims when dealing with Bible corrupters, for their minds run so fast and so eagerly to problems and reasons for not believing, that they have to be strait-jacketed about once every other paragraph so they will not let the truth, so far acquired, slip. Instead of leaping ahead and yelling, “What are you trying to prove now?” or, “Well, I was taught it meant this….” or, “So what does that prove?” or, “What difference does a detail like that make; the general picture is still there,” try standing still for a minute and letting this great truth penetrate you to your innermost being–the riders are NOT identical. By the information given in the passages, where you find them in the A.V., without perverting their meaning, structure, wording, or context, they plainly state that the two riders are NOT the same.

This is the cue for the versions to obscure the plain facts.

Immediately the Amplified Version inserts cross-references on the rider in Revelation 6:2 which run to Psalm 45 where the Lord Jesus is presented. Now why was this done? The Amplified forces the reader to accept an interpretation that is not found in the verses that interpret their own meaning. Why would anyone make the riders the same by a system of cross-references, when a white horse is given in both references in Revelation 6 and Revelation 19, and different information is given concerning their riders? Shades of Rome!! The ruse is all too apparent. The Amplified has not inserted cross-references to give you the Bible’s system of interpreting itself; the Amplified has violated an obvious reference which interprets the verse, and has inserted an obscure reference which will force Revelation 6 to agree with Revelation 19, even though they do NOT agree, as written. We are back in Chapter One of this dissertation. The Amplified revisers have produced a denominational farce to supersede the authority of the word of God, and they have perverted Revelation 6:2 to make it agree with the amillennial or postmillennial position that the Kingdom of Christ is here now, and is spreading. Their motive was Satanic. They found a verse they didn’t like, and they adopted a method to eliminate it–in this case the method was to refer it to a verse that would give the reader the wrong interpration. This is the same motive for the Catholic rejection of Revelation 17,18. It does not concern interpretations at all; it is simply that when scholars find verses in the A.V. that they object to, they change them so that they will line up to what the scholars agree is correct. In this respect the Amplified Version (from the Roman Catholic Vaticanus–Westcott and Hort Greek text) is as fraudulent a piece of work as ever hit the “bible” market. Running exactly neck-and-neck with Roman traditionalism, the scholars have deliberately, with intentional malice aforethought, rejected the plain English of the plain A.V. 9where they were plainly told that the riders differ), and have inserted their own private opinion by Revelation 6:2 so a reader who checked it could accept their own false doctrine on the millennial issue. How do we know it is false? Because, silly, they had to pervert the Bible to get it across!! If it were true, what is the necessity of leading the reader astray? There is no answer to that question.

Now, whatever may be said about the rider of Revelation 6:2, there is one thing that is certain. It is certain that he is a “dead ringer” for Jesus Christ, and so much so that for fifteen centuries he successfully deceived six major denominations (Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist, and Greek Orthodox) into thinking that he was! You must admit that he is so startlingly like the Lord Jesus that he could pass off as the Lord 90% of the time, and no one would know the difference. This opens up another whole avenue of thought and research in regards to the mysterious “Mr. X” and that is this: “Who, IN THE BIBLE, is the perfect imitation of Christ?” (Remember that war, famine, Death, and Hell will follow him! Rev. 6:4-8.) Did you notice the insertion of “in the Bible”? It is no time, now, to go outside the Bible to identify the man, until you know what the Bible says about him. Stay in the cover till you are sure of your footing.

Search the scriptures. Read them carefully, as the Lord commanded (John 5:39), and mark the differences in dispensations, as Paul commanded (2Tim 2:15). It is absolutely certain, if you do, that you will come out at Revelation knowing that the greatest imitator of Jesus Christ was not David, Paul, Joseph, Moses, Thomas A Kempis, Sheldon (“In His Steps”), or Schweitzer. The greatest imitator of Jesus Christ is a spiritual being called Lucifer or Satan (Rev. 12:9). Examine the evidence:

  1. Jesus is the “King of Kings” (Rev. 19). Satan is “king over all the children of pride” (Job 41).
  2. Jesus is the “Angel of the Lord” (Gal. 4:14). Satan appears as an “Angel of Light” (2Cor 11:11-14).
  3. “God is light,” and in Him there is no darkness (1John 1:5). Satan appears as an Angel “of light” (2Cor. 11:11-13).
  4. Jesus is “God manifest in the flesh” (1Tim. 3:16). Satan is the “god” of this world (2Cor. 4:4).
  5. Christ has a bride, who is a city (Rev. 21:9). Satan has a bride, who is a city (Rev. 17:1-9).
  6. Jesus cites the scripture in conflict (Luke 4:1-10). Satan cites the scripture in conflict (Luke 4:10).
  7. Christ preaches 42 months (Luke 3:23, John 2:13; 5:1; 6:4; 12:1). The Beast preaches 42 months (Rev. 13:5).
  8. Christ means “Anointed” (Christos, Messiah) (Acts 4:26, Ps. 2:2). Satan is “anointed” as a “christ” (Eze. 28:14, Matt. 24:5).
  9. God desires worship (John 4:23-26). Satan desires worship (Matt. 4:8-10).

If you wanted to locate the white horse rider of Revelation 6:2, you certainly could do better than a cross-reference to the “marriage of the Lamb” in Psalm 45!!

Since “The entrance of thy words giveth light,” the student has here stumbled on another great Christian truth revealed only in the word of God. This tremendous truth is that the greatest force in the universe, opposing righteousness, is a spiritual being who desires religious worship. This brings to desolation a dozen or more religious systems, for they are erected on the flimsy platform that “since all worship or believe in some God, therefore God must exist.” This naive and disastrous approach is the approach of modern science. It assumes that any God is the right one, and that there is only one. But Paul corrects this inaccurate guesswork in 1Corinthians 8:5. The “god of this world” is primarily religious. Hence, his sphere of activity would not be found primarily in road-houses, juke-joints, beer-alls, taverns, pool-halls, gambling-dens, dance-halls, and dope-pads. His primary sphere of activity and influence would be in Church Councils, formation of catechisms, Bible translations, rituals and sacramental acts, prayer meetings, and ecumenical movements!!

Someone has made a horrible mistake! They have been teaching that Satan is either not there (as Christian “Science” or physicists teach), or that if he is there, he is a big, bad “boogie-man” like Hitler or Kruschev. Perish the thought! The Satan of Bible revelation is so far superior to Hitler or Jruschev, he wouldn’t even waste time to deal with them. They couldn’t fool anybody. Satan’s job, as revealed in scripture, is to counterfeit by imitation (see Matt. 13:23-30,36-42). The RSV, incidentally, fails to see this basic, primary truth of Bible doctrine, and failing to see it, they do a fantastic thing in translation the parable of the wheat and the tares. They translate (this is hard to believe!) the word “tares” as “weeds”! This, of course, destroys the entire sense of the parable, for the whole teaching is based on the similarity between the tares and the wheat that was undiscernible until the fruit came! By translating “tares” as “weeds,” the RSV has produced a “devil” (see the tare-sower in Matt. 13:39) that does not have enough sense to fool anyone! The RSV translators thus “show their hand.” They are obviously gullible, deluded, foolish men who are in total ignorance of the methods of operation in the spirit realm (Eph. 5:10-15). Paul said, “We are not ignorant of his (the Devil’s) devices” (see 2Cor 2:11). The sower of the good seed (Matt. 13:37) knows exactly what was sowed and who sowed it, but the servants of the household couldn’t spot it–it was too cleverly done. The same situation is found in Revelation 6:2. The man is cleverly disguised as the Lord Jesus Christ. However, upon close examination in the searching light of the “word,” he appears for what he is–a tare, not an ear of wheat. He is an imitator who obeys implicitly the RSV’s admonition in 1Corinthians 11:1 to be “imitators of Christ.” (The Greek, by the way, is “follow,” as in the A.V.: but the RSV crowd always did teach salvation by works, so little more than this corruption could be expected from them.)

The mysterious rider on the white horse in Revelation 6:2 becomes less and less mysterious the more we ride him into the spotlight of that light that is called “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Ps. 119:105). Mr. “X” is a king, but he is not the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”; he is a counterfeit. It might be added that he is such an excellent counterfeit that he escaped the detection of Augustine, Origen, Jerome, Eusebius, Pope Gregory, Cardinal Spellman, Fulton Sheen, Pope Pius, Pope John, Berkhof, Hodge, Dabney, Kuyper, Calvin, Trench, Alford, A.T. Robertson, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, James Joyce, Kagawa, Norman Vincent Peale, Earl Stanley Jones, Dean Weigle, and the archbishop of Canterbury. Pretty good counterfeit job, eh what?

The rider of Revelation 6:2 is a King; the Latin for “king” is “Rex.” He comes to imitate Christ and to pass off as Christ Himself (2Thes 2:2-6). Thus he becomes one of the central fitures of Bible revelation. One may say that he is the second most important figure in scripture outside of the Lord Jesus Himself. This Mr. “X” is actually a hoax. He is typified by 18 men in the Old Testament: Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Balak, Sisera, Abimelech, Ahab, Goliath, Saul, Absalom, Haman, Nabal, Jeroboam, Judas, Herod, Solomon, and Nebuchadnezzar. Eighteen, count them–3 times six. (The Greek for “six” is “hex.”) The rider under surveillance, then is a Rex who is a hoax, and he is spotted by a number–six (hex). Did you ever study words that END in “X”?

This King with the crown and the bow is the main subject of revelation, exclusive of the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is so powerful and deceptive in conceiling his own person and work, that to this day, there are not twenty books in print that give the information on him found in the Bible (A.V. 1611).

  1. He is a prince (Dan. 9:26, John 16:11).
  2. He is a king (Dan. 8:21,23).
  3. He is called a “he-goat” (Dan. 8:21).
  4. He is called a “little horn” (Dan. 7:8).
  5. He is called “the King of the north” (Dan. 11).
  6. He is called “a king of fierce countenance” (Dan. 8:23).
  7. He is called “the antichrist” (1John 4:3). (Note the singular–not “antichrists” as in 1John 2:18.)
  8. He is called the “man of sin” or “son of perdition” (2Thes 2:2-4).
  9. He is called the “beast” out of the pit (Rev. 17:5-9).
  10. He has A NUMBER, A NAME, A SIGN, and A MARK (Rev. 13:15-18).

To sum it up, he is the gentleman for whom we are looking in this thesis, and when he is revealed, we shall look for his mark. “X” marks the spot. Have you ever studied words that end in “X”?

The mysterious “X” on the white horse is a bowman. That is a very important thing to note. Only two hunters are found in the scriptures; two of them are named, and the others are non-descript (Job 10:16, Prov. 6:26, Mic. 7:2, and Ps. 140:11). The only two named are Esau and Nimrod. Nothing good is said anywhere in the scripture about these men, but a great deal bad is said about them (see Gen. 24:23, Mal. 1:3, Heb. 12:15-17, Isa. 10:5-10, Mic. 5:5,6, Isa. 23:13). Nimrod is a Hamite (Gen. 10) trying to integrate the world (Gen. 11:1) in Shemite territory (see Gen. 10,11). Legends about him are numerous, and an exhaustive treatment will be found in Hislop’s “The Two Babylons.”

Now a bowman uses two fingers to pull his bow string. He uses three if he is weak or if the bow has a hard pull (say 90-100 pounds). However, from time immemorial, the sign of a bowman has been the forefinger and the index finger raised and slightly bent. This gesture (in 1960) is the infantry signal for a bayonet assault. It is the assault signal for armored tanks, and it is the Boy Scout sign of a salute. It is a bowman’s sign. The gesture is remarkable in its catholicism. When a man or woman smokes, they have the fingers in the exact position. When a drunk asks for a jigger, the standard is “two fingers.” These two fingers placed behind and against the upper teeth, and thrust forward, makes the most derisive and insulting gesture that an Italian knows. The same two fingers plit make Churchill’s “V for Victory” sign so publicized by the press in World War II.

Now somewhere down the line somebody has failed to notice an amazing coincidence. The coincidence is that the Roman Catholic pontiff has ordained this two-fingered gesture as the identifying mark of his CHURCH’S BLESSING!

From the first Catholic paintings of “baby Jesus” with His two fingers uplifted, to the last Pope on the front of Life Magazine with the same two uplifted, history bears record that the sign of the bowman is the sign of the papal blessing. It is the Latin method of a Catholic crossing himself. (By the way, the word for “cross” in Latin is “crux.” Did you ever study words that end in “X”?)

I have, in my “doomsday books,” clippings covering a period of twenty years. In these pictures, which are photos from newspapers and magazines, you can observe how the AP, INS and UP photographers have unconsciously (or with previous instructions) caught, in the act, every public figure that ever raised the two fingers in the papal salute. I have photos of Eisenhower, Churchill, Roosevelt, Barkley, Pope John, Pope Pius, and twenty Kennedy “democrats” caught in the act. I have Eddy Arnold outside an unnamed “country” church with the fingers obediently raised for the act of crossing. A cross is made by two opposing and intersecting lines. It is an “X”. There are variations of this “X,” but “X” it is–exactly as an arrow lies crossing and perpendicular to the bow. Try as he may, no Catholic can explain the symbol of the two raised fingers, for it was the sign of a drawn and released bow-string 3000 years before the first Catholic ever drew a breath of air. The armed forces today inherit and understand the meaning of the sign from the mighty hunter (Gen. 10:9,10). They know what it means; it means “KILL ‘EM!”

We may naturally expect the rider of Revelation 6:2 to be followed by war (6:4) and Death (6:8), for he is a bowman. One of the Hebrew roots for Baal, incidently, is “hairy, archer, or horseman.” The antichrist is referred to 13 times in Revelation, and there are 13 Baals mentioned in the Old Testament.

Let us corral the horse and rider of Revelation 6:2 and look a little closer yet. This “sign of the cross” that the heathen “cross themselves” with–what is it?

The cross is the instrument of a CURSE in the New Testament (Gal. 3:13), and it is the instrument of death, not of life (Gal. 6:14). The “cross” that Paul glories in, in the passage, is certainly not some little molten image hanging around his neck! The passage is an additional explanation of Romans 6, which describes in detail the death of the Christian in Christ, and his identification with a dead, buried, and risen Saviour. To make this an image hung on the neck is equivalent to walking around with a little electric-chair hung on your shoulders, for the CROSS was the instrument of capital punishment for a criminal. To CROSS yourself, in view of the Bible information on the subject, is the equivalent of putting yourself under a curse. Hence, “cross my heart and hope to die.” (You probably will! Go to the church of your choice while you can!!) “I told a lie, but I had my fingers CROSSED.” “He gave me the double cross.” “He better hadn’t CROSS me!”

The rider, then, has some further identification on his person. He is a king–REX. He is an imitation, therefore a HOAX. He uses the bowman’s signs of two fingers, with which the heathen cross themselves–CRUX. He has no arrows and therefore conquers peaceably (Dan. 8:25), the Latin being–PAX. His number is six, six, six– Greek: HEX. And he is such a perfect imitation of Christ that he fools many–he is a PARADOX. Did you ever study words that end in “X”? The man speaks with the voice of God (Rev. 13:6, 2Thes. 2:3-6). Latin: VOX. He speaks from “the seat” (Rev. 2:13) which is “EX-cathedra,” and as any good Christian, he will undoubtedly observe (with fervor) Christmas–Latin: “X” MASS. Did you ever study words that end in “X”? How about jinx, tax, jax, sax, or ax?

There is no mistaking the man’s religious affiliation. In Revelation 17, he is called “THE BEAST,” and as such, his bride is “MYSTERY BABYLON.” Now you know why Revelation 17,18 was picked as a test-case sampling in chapter one when discussing matters of gradual Bible-corruption! Once any reader admits that he understands Revelation 17:18,9,3,4,5, and 6, the “dirty work” is done. Never again can that reader honestly believe in the sincerity or in the “Christianity” of Roman Catholicism. He is “ruined for life.” The only hope the priest has to deceive him is to keep him out of the Bible, or make him think he doesn’t dare interpret it if he starts to understand it; and of course, this is the standard method taught (as Christian doctrine) to the Catholic adherent.

Rome suddenly looms ominously in all her ghoulish glory.

Here we have a rider who is found in 18 types in the Old Testament. He is religious and desires worship, and is so thoroughly like Jesus Christ that it is impossible to detect one from the other without the aid of the Holy Spirit. He shows up with a twofingered salute taking over a kingdom with talk of peace. This kingdom is a direct off-shoot of the ancient Roman Empire (see the material exactly in Dan. 2 and Dan. 7). He is jointly ruling with the “Woman” of Revelation 17, and there can be no doubt about her identity whatsoever, for she is the original corrupter whose leaven is destined to leaven the entire lump of Christian doctrine (Matt. 13:33). We have followed her course in chapter one from the time that she added seven books to the Bible (in spite of Jesus’ canonical statements) to the time where she declared her “holy papa” to be infallible when he spoke “X” CATHEDRA. Her Roman holiday is “X” MASS, and every heresy in the Protestant church can be traced to her manipulations and refutations of the Holy Scriptures.

We are back at that place where the motive of Bible corrupters is clearly set before us. We have discovered the real reason why men hate the word of God and why they are determined to destroy it (while professing to believe it!). It is because the book places the Roman Catholic system as the root and trunk of apostasy, and the Mother of the greatest blasphemer who will ever appear on the stage of human history–THE ANTICHRIST.

This is cause enough for a prolonged, sustained, murderous, concentrated, and unmitigated attack on the Textus Receptus, which Rome has never abandoned and never will abandon. Unable to destroy the authority of the A.V. from 1611 to 1811, Rome went underground into the Revision Committees and spawned forth five dozen “Bibles” between 1884 and 1965, that are all dark-age, Catholic versions of the original Christ-defying “Vaticanus.” Unable to burn the A.V. openly since 1700, Rome changed armour and destroyed it one page at a time by using the seminaries of the Protestants (Fundamental and Liberal like), and convincing their professors that the Vatican Manuscript (minus Hebrews 10, yet containing “Bel and the Dragon”) was the authoritative source of Revelation. No institution on the face of this earth would have done a thing like that without sufficient cause. The cause is apparent when one reads the passages in Revelation 17-19 and the passages that deal with the white-horse rider of Revelation 6:2. The cause is that the Bible has, from the start, openly attacked the Roman system as a Satan-inspired, man-made, hellbound system of Bible perversion seeking nothing but self-exaltation and supreme control over the lives of every human being on the face of the earth. (In the name of Christ, of course! BUT WHICH CHRIST?)

In the next chapter, we shall take up a study of the verses that bear on the number, name, sign, and mark of this “Christ” who is not the “Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). He comes, not to bless the earth, but to VEX. His followers receive not only a mark, but a sore (Rev. 16:2), which, as anyone knows, is a POX. Have you ever studied words that end with “X”?