7/9/2025

The four Horsemen of the apocalypse riding out onto the world's stage is one of the most famous images in the book of Revelation. But what do they represent? What is their purpose? And what does it have to do with us in the 21st-century?

The four Horsemen appear in rapid succession in Revelation 6:1-8. I didn’t spend much time on them (I couldn’t! There’s too much to get covered), so I wanted to say a bit more in this week’s Pastor’s Note.

Remember that Revelation was written to and for 7 specific churches in what is now Western Turkey. They were on the cusp of a time of great persecution, and Revelation was written to give them courage to withstand the coming onslaught. In chs. 4 and 5, God was shown to be on the throne and in his hand was a scroll, rolled up like an architect's blueprints or a general’s war plans. The scroll contained God’s plan for dealing with the evil in the world, and it was sealed with 7 seals.

When the Lamb was found worthy to open the scroll and initiate God’s plans, all heaven broke loose in praise! So you might expect that the next message would be a joyous scene of deliverance . . . but it doesn’t sound much like it. Instead of peace, the four horsemen of the apocalypse unleash judgment on the earth.

What’s the purpose of these judgements? For the people who were reading Revelation when it was first written, the four horsemen were attacks on what the Romans would consider their strengths. It’s similar to the way God exposed the powerlessness of Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods when he sent the plagues on Egypt. The plagues weren’t random acts; each plague was an attack against a specific god in whom Pharaoh and the people of Egypt trusted. 

This is the same thing: God is taking down the false security that’s centered in the Roman Empire and not in the Kingdom of God.  

And since a nation is only strong when it can protect and provide for its citizens, these are the two areas the horsemen attack. 

The first horse was white and it represented an invading army. The Romans were proud of their military might, but from the east came the Parthians who were famous for their horses and their archers. The Parthian king was Nikator, whose name means “victor” or “conqueror” (a play on the words “he went forth conquering and to conquer” in 6:2), led them riding on a white horse and under his leadership, the Parthians began to shave off sections of the eastern Roman Empire. 

The second horse was an attack on the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.  The rider carries a “great sword,”  a specific weapon used for swinging and cutting. It was the symbol of the emperor‘s authority, called the “right of the sword,” and was used by local authorities to stamp out dissent. Ironically, and using the sword to keep the peace, they were in reality, taking away peace (6:4). 

The next horsemen attacked the empire’s ability to provide food for its people. The Romans were proud of the abundance of the empire, but in the province where the 7 churches were, which was the bread basket for the empire, the rich merchants used the fertile farmland for olives and grapes, and the people, with no grain, experienced famine – that’s the meaning of 6:6, the line Kim read Sunday, “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay and 3 quarts of barley for a day’s pay, but do not damage the oil and the wine!” Under the emperor Domitian, who was the ruler when Revelation was written,  inflation in the region was 12,000%. 

And, of course, with invasion, all-out war, and famine in the air, the fourth horse, Death, cannot be far behind. 

So, why these judgments? Because things have to be exposed before they can be dealt with. On the surface, everything might look like “peace and safety,” and the propagandists might declare everything safe and good, but when we lift the lid, we see the ancient patterns of conquest, violence, oppression and death. Only then can we begin to understand what needs to be done if the world is to be really and truly healed and not just patched up.

So, instead of seeing the four horsemen as vengeance, I believe God intended them to be a wake-up call for the world.  It’s a wake up call for the Roman Empire of the early church, for the Irans, Syrias, and Turkeys of our day, and for whatever abusive systems lurk in the future.

There’s a timelessness in the visions of Revelation. They are true, not just because they happened in the past, but also because they happen in the present. This pattern of invasion, war, famine, and death are the basic ills that human beings inflict on one another. A lot of energy is spent on speculating about when they will arrive in our time or in the future.

The truth is, the horsemen have already been here, they are here now, and they will ride again in the future. As long as people insist on saying “no” to the one seated on the throne, this pattern will be repeated over and over until the final judgment comes.

So what do we do in the meantime? We trust God. We love God and love others. And we look behind the tragedies of the world to see God’s hand at work and to see tragedy as an opportunity for our faithful witness.

Blessings,
Pastor Terry