As detailed in prior articles, the farsighted strategy was to “capture” and degrade Gnosticism (Messiah Jesus’ teachings) in seven stages – hence, John reveals, the Seven Spirits of the Churches. The Ephesus spirit (34 to 136 AD) first subtly effaced Jesus’ teachings through Paul’s literary efforts – thus the White Horse of relative peace. The Smyrna spirit (136 to 323 AD) then heavily persecuted ordinary Christians – symbolised by the red (bloody) horse – but later seemed to relent and offer a “sweet-smelling” (myrrh–like) compromise that fused “pagan”, Judaic and Christian elements into a hybrid religion made palatable to the ordinary, the non-Elect. This ushered the Church into a new, dark, religiously blind era symbolised by the Black Horse. The compromise enabled this new Pergamos spirit (323 to 538 AD) to thrive and the Church to become a lofty institution that could eventually enforce the marriage of Church and State into a union of unimaginable power and wealth (per-gamos means “by marriage”).
It was during the Pergamos spirit that the first “trumpet” sounded in 395 AD (Rev. 8:7) and the first bowl of “plagues” (Rev. 16:2) was poured out – both associated with the earth. “Trumpets” and “Plagues” referred to forces and changes in the political landscape. Indeed, for it to ascend (Tswana: pagama) the Church had to first overcome resistance from the ten “barbaric” tribes of Europe that made up the “ten horns” of the Beast that was Rome – beginning in 395 AD when the Goths led the first serious invasion into the Eastern Roman Empire. They briefly overran Rome itself in 410 AD. The Goths – under their leader Alaric – began their invasions from the cold, northern part of the Roman Empire and are thus likened to a “cold hailstorm” that strikes the “third part of the earth” (i.e. Europe).
