Posted on 01/28/2015 7:00:21 AM PST by Stingray
The identity of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse has mystified and intrigued people for centuries. Each symbolizes something, but what do they symbolize?
When you see the connection between Revelation, the gospels, and historical facts, then you, too, will begin to understand John's incredibly powerful letter.
Let's begin.
I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. Revelation 6:1-2 (NIV2011)
Some people claim this rider with the crown and bow is Christ. Some claim it's an end-time anti-Christ. Truth is, it's neither. When Christ was among His disciples on Earth, He gave them a commission:
He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Mark 16:15 (NIV2011)
After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it. Mark 16:19-20 (NIV2011)
The rider on the white horse is Christ's apostles, sent out as a conquering force to change the world. Paul said as much in his second letter to the Corinthians:
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (NIV2011)
Christ also told the chief priests He would be sending His messengers out, and what He told them would happen then, gives us clues as to the identities of the other three horsemen.
Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. Matthew 23:34 (NIV2011)
When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword. Revelation 6:3-4 (NIV2011)
While Christ was on earth, not one of His disciples was lost to persecution, and the only one whose life was lost, Judas Iscariot, took his own life out of guilt for betraying Christ.
But on the day of Pentecost, when Christ opened heaven and empowered His disciples to become His messengers, everything changed. Now they were as hated as He had been, just as Christ had foretold:
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. John 15:18 (NIV2011)
Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. John 15:20-21 (NIV2011)
“All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, John 16:1-4 (NIV2011)
Jesus also made clear the coming fratricide in Matthew 24:
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, Matthew 24:9-10 (NIV2011)
The rider of the red horse with the large sword represents those who persecuted, to death, Christ's messengers - those He sent to preach the gospel throughout the known world. What follows is what Christ prophesied in Matthew 23 & 24 about the persecutors of His messengers.
Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. Matthew 23:34-36 (NIV2011)
And whom does Christ name as the persecutors of the rider of the white horse?
Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. Matthew 23:37-38 (NIV2011)
In just this brief passage from Matthew 23, two things are abundantly clear:
Jesus is prophesying desolation for Israel in response to the way its apostate priesthood treated Him and His apostles, and He prophesies that the guilt of their sins would be held against them: that very generation that crucified Him and persecuted His messengers.
Need I remind you at this point who is sitting on the throne in heaven opening the scrolls?
This leads us to the rider on the black horse:
When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages, and six pounds of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” Revelation 6:5-6 (NIV2011)
This passage - like so many others in Revelation - is a direct reference to a passage in the Old Testament. The passage in Ezekiel to which it refers is a passage about Jerusalem's impending judgment at the hands of the Babylonains:
“Now, son of man, take a block of clay, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it. Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the people of Israel. Ezekiel 4:1-3 (NIV2011)
And note this specifically from Ezekiel 4:
He then said to me: “Son of man, I am about to cut off the food supply in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce. They will be appalled at the sight of each other and will waste away because of their sin. Ezekiel 4:16-17 (NIV2011)
The rider on the black horse is famine: the famine that was caused within Jerusalem after the Romans had sealed the people inside the city, as the Babylonians had, turning fortress Jerusalem into a prison.
Now of those that perished by famine in the city, the number was prodigious, and the miseries they underwent were unspeakable; for if so much as the shadow of any kind of food did any where appear, a war was commenced presently, and the dearest friends fell a fighting one with another about it, snatching from each other the most miserable supports of life.
The Works of Flavius Josephus.
Jerusalem, torn by civil war within its walls and the siege of Rome's legions without, saw thousands upon thousands of its citizens die by way of war and famine. And this is precisely what the pale horse's rider symbolizes.
And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, `Come and behold!' and I saw, and lo, a pale horse, and he who is sitting upon him--his name is Death, and Hades doth follow with him, and there was given to them authority to kill, (over the fourth part of the land,) with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and by the beasts of the land. Revelation 6:7-8 (YLT)
I've chosen Young's Literal Translation for this verse because people need to understand that what's being represented here is not the earth as we know it, but the land of Judah and Jerusalem. This is made perfectly clear in Luke's gospel:
“When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. Luke 21:20-22 (NIV2011)
In closing, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse represent events that occurred from the sending out of the apostles after that first post-resurrection Pentecost, to the judgment of Jerusalem and the "wicked generation" that killed Christ and His messengers. And how do I know this?
Because it had all happened once before.
The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and did not spare young men or young women, the elderly or the infirm. God gave them all into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. 2 Chronicles 36:15-19 (NIV2011)
Just as God had sent Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians to judge Judah and Jerusalem in 586 B.C., so Christ sent the legions of Rome, first under Vespasian then under Titus, to judge them starting in 66 AD, when the Jewish war with Rome began. It ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 AD, just as Christ had also foretold:
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” Matthew 24:1-2 (NIV2011)
Have you seen any of Walid Shoebat’s lectures on Revelation and the current Middle East? Pretty interesting.
What a pathetic "new heaven and a new earth" Preterists think God constructed.
“However, modern society seems to be hell-bent on recreating the situation and having it happen AGAIN, but on a global scale.”
And I would argue it’s precisely because false teachers - in both Christendom and Islam - have convinced enough people that these apocalyptic passages are for today, that people are trying to make these prophecies self-fulfilling.
It’s no secret that Iran wants nukes to start a war that will usher in the coming of their 12th Imam. And is there any impetus on the part of Christians to stop such a war believing that Armageddon will bring Christ back to earth???
Both are wrong. Both have been deceived. And it’s time to stop this before it’s too late.
You also miss the message if you take them as strictly symbolic. They are both.
Black horse - Capitalism
Red horse - Communism
Pale(green)horse - Islam
White horse - Christianity (Roman Church)
The pale horse of revelations is translated from the Greek word “chloros” which is translated in a couple of other places in the bible as green.
I believe there could quite possibly be dual fulfillment. God’s pretty darn big.
That statement makes no sense in light of your beliefs.
Too late for what? Aren't we in Christ's Kingdom now? Does He not control everything in it? Isn't Satan bound in hell? Haven't we gone through our Judgments?
And--most important--Isn't there "On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." ?? (Rev. 22:2)
What do we have to fear? The nations will be healed.
“What a pathetic “new heaven and a new earth” Preterists think God constructed.”
And yet His “new heaven and new earth” has been here since 70 AD. It’s called “His Body” and we are His temple. Not my words, Paul’s.
BTW you know there were no miles in that day so it can’t be 150 miles.
It was 12,000 furlongs. The number 12 is significant but the number 150 is not.
Rev 21:16 And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.
The white horse I think symbolizes Antichrist and it’s attending man centered philosophies(or the various social type “isms”), such as progressive socialism and hedonistic Utopianism, that seek to peal men away from God to serve a man centered state....which in turn leads to war, famine and pestilence. When people are stripped of their basic moral moorings, societies eventually become tyrannical, then implode in their inability to negotiate the fiscal, legal, and security demands placed upon that society. External enemies may view such societies as ripe for the picking...such as how Islamic Jihadis may view western nations at this time. The white horse symbolizes the attempt to forcibly build a “new world government” by force and by the use of a syncretized civil religion with Satan at the back of it all.
Civil wars result, famine and disease become rampant as persons of competence who could ameliorate the conditions are killed off by the political agencies of the dying regimes, by disease or strife, or they have gone into hiding and are missing. The 4 horsemen depict a dark vision of the future of humans being brought to the very end of ourselves and our vain attempts to make ourselves into “gods”. Only by Christ intervening will save what ever life is left upon the Earth at that time.
I know that. The number given translates to our modern equivalent of about 1500 miles--not 150 miles.
Wanna see something creepy? A video during the violent muzzie uprising in Egypt and what appears to be a spirit horse and rider....a green horse and rider.
Take a look.
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/spirits-in-the-streets-of-cairo-egypt/o4LLMwa-F2VCQVOAQNZ7bQ
“That statement makes no sense in light of your beliefs.
Too late for what? Aren’t we in Christ’s Kingdom now? Does He not control everything in it? Isn’t Satan bound in hell? Haven’t we gone through our Judgments?
And—most important—Isn’t there “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” ?? (Rev. 22:2)
What do we have to fear? The nations will be healed.”
I’m sorry, but you seem to regard ignorance as a virtue. Christ isn’t coming back to earth. Those who believe in Him are here to proclaim His gospel and make the world a better place to live. We - His church - is that which brings “healing to the nations”, or at least we should be. Unfortunately, most of the church is wrapped up in seeing the world that doesn’t believe in Christ burn in a nuclear Armageddon just so the self-righteous can say, “See? Told ya’ so!”
Our purpose here is to live as though heaven is real, so that we’re not surprised to see what it’s like when we get there. And what is the currency of the kingdom?
Righteousness, PEACE, and joy.
I’m not really sure how you think standing by and watching the world burn in a nuclear holocaust, just because you think Jesus will come and fix it, really represents the best interests of heaven or earth.
So much for the entire book of 2 Peter, then. Any other Scripture you tend to toss out?
Mind reading? Where did I say--or even imply--that?
“The white horse I think symbolizes Antichrist...”
I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. Revelation 6:2 (NASB)
The Greek word for “crown” in this verse is “stephanos”. It is used 13 other times in the New Testament, and ALWAYS in relation either to Christ, His apostles, or believers in the church. It is NEVER used in describing “anti-Christ.”
Revelation was written around 96AD and he was writing about things that will come. When did "every eye" see Jesus coming? When did all those on earth marvel at the beast? When did the whole world see Jesus coming in the clouds? When did the whole world bow down to Him? Where is your "new heaven and new earth?
>>all things written were fulfilled<<
Why would you change the words of scripture like that? It says that all things will be fulfilled. It doesn't say they have already been fulfilled.
>>And please, let’s keep John’s words in context. He also wrote that they were living “in the last hour.”<<
I thought you said that what John wrote we hyperbole? Now you say parts are not? Who decides which are and which are not?
>>If they were living in the last hour, we cannot also be living in the last hour.<<
So you take that literally but not other parts? I suppose it is only you Preterists that will decide which is which?
Preterists have a huge problem with most of scripture and much of history. All of which proves them in error.
Yep -full preterism on display at it's finest.
A good argument can be made for this view, and you have laid out the foundations of this argument. I think the argument that the White Horse is Christ or Christ's gospel going out into the land to be followed by war, famine and pestilence is also a good argument. Both can be supported by both NT and OT scripture. Personally, I can't make a stand on this issue because I am just not sure - I don't feel the Holy Spirit leading me one way or the other. Perhaps these parts of the scripture are meant for later generations and will become more obvious as more historic revelation occurs.
“So much for the entire book of 2 Peter, then. Any other Scripture you tend to toss out?”
Just as Revelation was written to the seven churches in Asia Minor, AND NOT TO US, Peter didn’t write his letters to us, either.
This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2 Peter 3:1 (NASB)
Second letter “to you?” Hmmm...Guess we better see to whom he addressed the first letter, huh?
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia...1 Peter 1:1 (NASB)
If you’re a Bithnyian and lived almost 2,000 years ago, then yes, this letter was written to you.
If not, be careful how you apply it to today.
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