The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
In Revelation 5:1–7, the apostle John described Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, receiving the scroll of End Time prophecies from God, and we are told that this scroll is sealed shut with seven seals. In Revelation 6:1–8, Jesus opened the first four seals, and John saw four ominous horsemen riding through the Earth. In popular tradition, these are known as the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
The first horsemen rode a white horse and had a bow, “and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” Interpretations vary widely on this horse and rider: some say it describes Christ himself in 33 A.D., riding forth to conquer the world with the Gospel; others insist that it is symbolic of the Antichrist conquering the world in the End Time. For reasons I will describe below, I believe that it is neither one, but the spirit of greed and conquest itself that leads to war.
The second horse was red, the color of blood, “and power was given to him that sat on him to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another: and he was given a great sword.” Scholars universally agree that this horseman symbolizes war. The third horse was black, “and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand,” and was told to weigh out a meager portion of wheat for a day’s wages. This rider, Bible scholars agree, is famine. When Jesus opened the fourth seal, the fourth rider was named outright: John saw “a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.”
Many people believe that the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” will only begin riding and bringing great calamities at the very End of Time, but this is inaccurate. We see these same four horsemen already riding throughout the earth way back in 519 B.C.—over 500 years before Christ was born, and some 2,500 years before our day. (See Zech. 1:8–11 and 6:1–8.) When the prophet Zechariah asked what the four horsemen were, God explained that they were the four spirits of the heavens (Zech. 6:4–5), sent out by him to bring judgments on the earth.
Remember, the scroll contains the prophecies of the End Time events, and the seals are not the scroll itself. Jesus told John in the very beginning, “Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be after this” (Rev. 1:19). The things John saw belonged in one of two timeframes: “the things which are” (that existed in 95 A.D.) and “the things which shall be” (the things that shall be in the future, in the End Time).
The seals were not the scroll itself; rather, they tell the entire story of human suffering on this earth over the long millennia. Conquest (the first seal), wars (the second seal), famine (seal three), and death (seal four) have plagued earth from the beginning of time to the present. These calamities correspond with the signs Jesus mentioned in Mat. 24:6–7—rumors of war, wars, famines and earthquakes—which he explained “must come, but the end is not yet.” Jesus said:
- “And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and plagues, and earthquakes, in diverse places” (Mat. 24:6–7).
Take the third horse, for example—famine: famines of mind-staggering proportions have plagued the earth for millennia. In China alone, the disruption and famines caused by the Mongol invasion of the 1200s left 60 million dead; the 1333–1337 famine killed 6 million; famines in 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 left 45 million dead.; from 1850–1873, a combination of uprisings, drought and famine killed over 60 million Chinese. In India, there were 14 major famines between the 11th–17th centuries During the 1022-1033 Great Famine entire provinces were depopulated. I mention all this to stress Jesus’ point: “All these things must come to pass, but the End is not yet.”
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have ridden across the Earth in the past, continue their onslaught in the present, and will still be riding in the End Time—right up until the very Battle of Armageddon—but they don’t describe only future events. They have been the bane of mankind since the beginning of history.
