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On the Four Horns As Carpenters of Zechariah 1: 18-21
Posted : 28 Apr, 2013 04:49 AM
On the Four Horns As Carpenters of Zechariah 1: 18-21
"Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns.
19. And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And
he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah,
Israel, and Jerusalem.
20.And the LORD shewed me four carpenters.
21.Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These are
the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his
head: but these are come to fray them, to cast out the horns of the
Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to scatter
it." Zechariah 1: 18-21
A horn is usually a nation, government or a people. These four
"carpenters" are the governments that have scattered the people of
God, here called Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, or those claiming to be
his people who are being scattered by these four horns as judgment.
But which timeline is involved here, and which governments are the
four carpenters?
Lets look at the Hebrew word translated as carpenters. Carpenters in
Zechariah 1: 20 is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance Number 2796,
charash, from 2790, a fabricator of any material, artificer,
craftsmen, maker, mason, workman."
But, again, these four "carpenters" are governments, and calling them
charash is metaphoric in some way.
Lets look at the Commentary of John Gill to get some idea of what the
traditional Christian Church's view of these four horns might have
been. In his commentary on Zechariah 1: 18, John Gill says "...Targum
interprets them of 'four kingdoms'; and which Kimchi and Abarbinel
understand of the four monarchies, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and
Roman;"
Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome are the four kingdoms in King
Nebuchadnezzar's dream of Daniel 2 which Daniel interpreted to be the
Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires (see Daniel 2: 32-45).
Traditional church doctrine tends to say that the four governments or
empires of Daniel 7 are exactly the same as the four in Daniel 2.
Daniel 7: 1-8 says "In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon
Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote
the dream, and told the sum of the matters.
2. Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold,
the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.
3. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.
4. The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till
the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth,
and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to
it.
5. And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised
up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it
between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour
much flesh.
6. After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had
upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four
heads; and dominion was given to it.
7. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast,
dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron
teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with
the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were
before it; and it had ten horns.
8. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them
another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns
plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the
eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things."
The four governments of Daniel 7 are a quartet like the four in Daniel
2. But there is no reason in the text to see them as being the same
empires. If they are another set of four governments in a later time
line, they might have some similarity to the empires of Daniel 2, but
would not be the identical empires.
Remember that there were two major empires in the Mid-East before the
Babylonian empire. These were the Egyptian and Assyrian empires, both
of which interacted with the people of God. Likewise, we can find in
history a total of six major world empires after the Cross, to
parallel the six empires before the Cross, all of which interact with
the people of God, either physical Israel or Israel reborn in Christ
of the New Covenant.
In our own timeline, there have been four major world governments,
which interestingly match up with the descriptions in Daniel 7 of the
four beasts, the lion with eagle's wings which were plucked, the bear,
which devours or destroys much flesh, the leopard, and the fourth
beast, "...dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had
great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the
residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts."
There were two governments after the Cross which were Catholic, the
Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire. The Spanish empire ran into the "Protestant winds" and Queen Elizabeth's Navy when it sent the Spanish Armada to defeat England, then rising as the Lion kingdom, the first
of the modern quartet.
The British Empire existed for a few centuries before the Russian Bear
Soviet Union empire begin to rise in 1917. Then, in a dialectic
collision Hitler's leopard empire rose up in the thirties to oppose
the Russian Bear, and we got World War II. And World War II was
important for the development of the fourth beast of Daniel 7 as a
world power or superpower, which is diverse from the others, and
dreadful and terrible.
The three world empires which defeated Nazi Germany, the leopard
kingdom, met in a historically important meeting in the persons of
Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in February
1945 at Yalta. Yalta was the Crimean resort place. So we have the
Bear increasing in its power in 1945, while the British lion is still
a power but not increased. And the American power was increased to
soon become the full fledged fourth diverse beast, or world
superpower. In the period of about 1945 to 1948 important events in
history were the founding of the United Nations, as part of the fourth
beast, the creation of the American national security state by the
National Security Act of 1947, the bringing into the U.S. of former
Nazi intelligence operatives and scientists and finally, the creation
of the the little horn (Daniel 7: 8) state of Israel in 1948.
Revelation 6: 2-8 presents a metaphoric set of four horses and
horsemen, the white horse whose rider has a crown and goes out to
conquer, the red horse, whose rider takes peace for the earth, the
black horse whose rider holds a set of balances, and finally that
"pale" or chloros horse (green horse) whose rider is Death and Hell
followed after him. "And power was given unto them over the fourth
part of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger,and with
death..."
The quartet of Revelation 6: 2-8 makes sense as being metaphoric
concepts of the same quartet of modern world governments as powers
interpreted to be the British lion, the Russian bear, the Nazi German
Third Reich, and America-United Nations as the fourth beast. Some
justification for this interpretation can be found in Revelation 13: 2
where the first beast is described as being like the leopard, bear and
lion.
The four horses of Revelation 6: 2-8 are also color coded, as the
white colonial power of the British empire, sort of civil and said to
have a man's heart in Daniel 7: 4. The red horse is the Soviet
Marxist system in the form of Bolshevism, but representing something
broader, which could include Transformational Marxism. The black
horse is fascism, in which big corporations and big banks rule through
a totalitarian government under their control. The pale horse, among
other things, represents the mixing of the white, red and black
horses, and don't forget that Death rides the pale horse and Hell
follows close behind him.
The four horns as the four carpenters of Zechariah 1: 18-21 are these
four horses of Revelation 6:2-8, which are world powers or governments
having incorporated some of the traits of the British, Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany empires of the recent past, especially of the
twentieth century period of about 1933 to 1948. The four carpenters
are represented by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - and Hitler - and
are also represented by the last four American presidents who have
traits of the white, red, black and pale horses of Revelation 6.
In history, since the important period of 1945-1948 these four
"horses" and riders have scattered God's people. During this period
of time, the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3 and the leavening
of Luke 13: 18-21 gained momentum. The Christian II Timothy
Church, which is never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, and
resists the truth (II Timothy 3: 7-8) become more evident in this
period. The remnant, mentioned in Revelation 11: 13 and in Revelation
12: 17, having the testimony of Jesus Christ (Revelation 12: 17) are
literally scattered over the world. And as in Daniel 12: 7 the
spiritual and earthy power of the holy people are scattered, and the
power of the II Timothy church is diminished.
God's people have been scattered in the sense that their spiritual power
has been diminished since 1945-1948 because the worldly culture under
these world empires of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13: 1-2, as well as
from the four horses and riders of
Revelation 6 have become more hostile to the true Gospel. The II
Timothy church has incorporated some of this worldly culture into
itself.
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