3797 — The Four Living Creatures
By Editor
Will you please explain in the "Question Corner" what the symbols of Rev. 4:6-9 represent, the four living creatures? These were much more fully explained about a year ago in the studies on the Revelation than we can explain here with the space at our disposal. In brief, it is the understanding of the writer that they represent companies of angels arranged in the form of these various creatures, not that they always take this form. That is indicated by their appearance in Eze. 1:10 and in Isaiah 6. They are among the agencies which God uses for doing His work in the world and in the universe. They are so perfectly disciplined, so wholly responsive to His Spirit, that they move in exact order, in whatever form they take. Sometimes we see singers arranged in the form of a cross; sometimes we see dancers arranged in the form of a serpent, and the dance is called a "serpentine dance." Sometimes we find soldiers and sailors arranged to represent various forms. For instance, on a British ship in a Chinese port a few years ago, sailors dressed in white were arranged on one side of a ship so as to make the inscription, "God Save the King." And so God's great angelic forces are arranged in the form of men and oxen and lions and eagles, which of themselves may be symbolical, the lion representing strength, the ox patience, the eagle glory, and the man wisdom. The four standards under which Israel pitched their camps were Judah, Ephraim, Dan, and Reuben, and tradition tells us that on these standards were respectively the lion, the ox, the eagle, and the man.