Breastplates Of Fire, Hyacinth And Brimstone: What Do These Mean?

And the number of the army of the horsemen 

were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the 

vision, and them that sat on them, having 

breastplates of fire, and of hyacinth and brimstone:

 and the heads of the horses were as the heads 

of lions;  and out of their mouths issued fire

 and smoke  and brimstone. By these three was

 the third part of men killed, by the fire, 

and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, 

which issued out of their mouths. For their power 

is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their 

tails were like unto serpents, and had heads 

and with them they do hurt. And the rest of

 the men which were not killed by these 

plagues yet repented not of the old works 

of their hands, that they should not worship 

devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, 

and stone, and of wood: nor hear, nor walk: 

they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, 

nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Revelation 9:16-21

     Theologians are always looking for the meaning of Scripture and applying what they have come to believe to by correct according to their theological views. For instance: some will, and many do, always place the meaning on things that happened with and to Rome, or the Israelite nation. Some apply the symbols to things that they are familiar with: i.e., helicopters, thermonuclear war, etc., only to give their interpretation as though God has given to them some special "key." I have distanced myself from those opinion and have attempted to only look at the words and find definition and possible reasons why they were used to define the judgments and coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let us then look at the symbols used in these verses.

      Horses were used in and as weapons of war by those nations that had horses such as Egypt, Syria, Persians, Romans, and others and the riders wore special equipment to protect them from harm. So we know that this symbol of a horse means war. The riders wore a breastplate of fire (the Greek means fiery) and throughout Scripture fire was used in several ways, one such way was to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Fire was used to burn the sacrifice by Elijah. Fire is used in the Lake of Fire, Gehenna where all thrown into it are burned up. The breastplate then worn by this army had the power to destroy and cleanse the earth of, as stated, a third of the population. This breastplate was of hyacinth. A flower? Yes! That is if one does not know something of the word Hyacinth. The word Hyacinth is derived from Hyacinthus who was believed to be a handsome young Spartan prince who the gods Apollon and Zephyros loved, Hyacinthus was killed by Apollon when he threw a discus and hitting Hyacinthus in the head. Apollon was grieved and transformed the dying Hyacinthus into a larkspur flower. In Thessalonica they had their version of Hyacinthus who they also named Hymenaios (Of the Hymns) and as with Apollon love, Daphne who is associated with temples among the Lacedemonians. It is interesting to not that we have fascinating correspondence between the Jewish high priest and the king of the Spartans (Lacedemonians) of Greece. The evidence of those early inhabitants (330-309 B.C.) were in fact Israelites. We find this information in the Apocraphal book: First Maccabees, chapter 12, verses 5-23. We have passage from Flavious Josephus relating to this kinship of he Jews of the Maccbean age with the Spartans, and includes a letter of Areus king of the Lacedemonians to Onias the high priest.
(An exerpt from Antiquities xiii.5 by Flavius Josephus). Daphne had her own sacred laurel trees. There is a Temple of Apollo Daphnephoros, Eretria a 7th to 6th century temple excavated a place where citizens were to take the oath, as seen on inscriptions. We can find the temple to Apollon between and near Corinth, and towards and with Thessalonic, Ephesus, the cult of Apollon. It would seem that to use this flower, a hyacinth that is supposed to have sprung from the blood of Hyacinthus, a blue flower, has significance to false worship.Brimstone a word translated form the Hebrew and is an idiomatic expression of signs of God's wrath in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament. This word often appears in reference to the fate of the unfaithful. Brimstone is yellow in color and is known as sulphur, a chemical that burns. As a young boy working in the drying yards for drying fruit we used sulphur to cook the fruit so they would not blacken when laid out in the sun to dry. When you opened the tent of room where this cooking took place your eyes would burn and water, it is powerful. Notice this: the fire, the smoke, the brimstone issued out of the mouth. Those who teach heresy, false teaching are spurting out of their mouths that which God hates and will destroy. There were tails that stung and spurred poison and had heads, heads where designs are formulated and in this case to do harm to men. 

    All this comes to those who will not repent of their sins. Those works of their hands that are not governed by the commands of God. It is those who worship idols, devils, , those who will not hear, nor walk in the will of God, murderers, sorcery, and fornication, thieves. These men of this type will be destroyed. It is clear that the final words to us is that we who are alive must not fall into sinful works. We must come to know the reality of God, at any cost. You must come face to face with Him and be obedient to Him. All the promises of God are of no avail to us until obedience, then we can understand the nature of God. We must be "born again," of obedience and then by our obedient life we can say "Amen" to a promise, then that promise is yours. 

LORD, who shall abide in they tabernacle?

     Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? 

He that walketh uprightly, speaketh the

     truth in his heart.

                  Psalm 15:1-2

Do not chase fables

Richard L. Crumb