Visions of Judgment: The Coming Ride of the Horsemen of Revelation
The prophetic message of the infamous horsemen of the apocalypse forms a central part of the judgments poured upon the earth in the Day of the Lord. The news brought by these horsemen is not good, but bad. The implications for mankind are staggering. In this first article of a series, we introduce the overall prophecy and look in detail at the first horseman.
by Darris McNeely
Nothing can be more stirring than a scene of horsemen galloping across a landscape. Moviemakers use such scenes to add drama, mystery and power to their stories.In Revelation chapter 6, Christ uses four horsemen to represent the first four of seven seals He opens from the scroll in His hand. These images have intrigued generations of Bible scholars and students. Riding across the prophetic landscape, these dramatic images of religion, war, famine and pestilence cast a pall of terror upon the world. Is there a meaning for our troubled and uncertain world today? Do these images foretell greater calamity for the earth's inhabitants?
Let's look and see.
One worthy to open
To understand the seals we need first to examine chapter 5. John is looking at a vision of the throne of God and he sees "in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals" (Revelation 5:1). No one in heaven or earth is able or worthy to open the scroll and reveal its contents. John despairs at the absence of anyone capable of opening the scrolls. But a voice from one of the elders around the throne says, "Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals" (verse 5).What John saw next was the sight of the glorified Christ in the commanding position to receive and dispense the full power of God. "And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne" (verses 6-7). What follows from this awesome scene of angelic praise is the stirring anthem to Christ's role in the plan of God. The four living creatures and 24 elders sing a new song. "You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals," they proclaim in unison.
To this scene is now added the voice of many angels, perhaps numbering into the hundreds of millions, all loudly proclaiming, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!" (verses 11-12.) With a thundering crescendo the next stanza arrives from "every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them...saying: Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!" This song of praise concludes with a decisive "Amen!".
Such is the scene that stands as a prelude to the opening of the seals. Christ alone holds the fate of mankind in His hands. He alone is worthy of making judgment upon the nations. The destiny of humanity is not by chance or whim.
The setting
What is the time setting of these prophecies? Scholars offer divergent opinions, but Revelation in fact reveals the time setting for the prophecy is the Day of the Lord (Revelation 1:10), which puts it into the prophetic period mentioned in numerous scriptures. Notice how the prophet Joel described this period: "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD" (Joel 2:31).The Day of the Lord begins with God's intervention in world affairs to spare human life from a combined period of global conflict and satanic deception. It is the time of world conflict described by Daniel as a "time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation" (Daniel 12:1). Mankind has suffered for centuries from the combined impact of war, famine and disease, but no previous period of calamity will compare to this age-ending storm described in Revelation.
When the seals open before John, he sees the first four uniquely pictured. Four horsemen arise in eerie sequences that stand together as a fascinating unit of prophecy. Before we examine each one of these horsemen, let's look at another prophecy Christ gave during His ministry.
The Olivet prophecy
Christ and His disciples were in Jerusalem. After looking at the temple's buildings, they crossed the Kidron Valley, climbed the Mount of Olives and paused to ask how they would know the signs of Christ's coming and the end of the age (Matthew 24:1-3).Christ gave four signs that correspond with the first four seals of Revelation 6: "And Jesus answered and said to them: 'Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, "I am the Christ," and will deceive many. And you will 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 will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places'" (Matthew 24:4-7).
Here is an overview of trends and conditions from the first century until the end of the age. False religion, war, famine and disease would be endemic to civilization. As this and later articles in this series will show, humanity has always suffered from the effects of these four signs. But nothing in history will compare to the deluge revealed by the opening of the seals by the Lamb. The devastation caused by the opening of the four seals will be unprecedented as they set the stage for the return of Christ as King of Kings.
Let's look now at what John saw.
The first seal: the conqueror
As the first seal opens, John writes the following, "Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, 'Come and see.' And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer" (Revelation 6:1-2).White is a sign of purity and peace. Here is a rider who appears to come in the name of and with a message of peace. But his methods are that of a conqueror, one who imposes his version of peace upon the world. Possibly this rider will bring about a pseudo-peace, a condition described by Paul in 1Thessalonians 5:3, "For when they say, 'Peace and safety!' then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape."
Some confuse this rider with Jesus Christ, whom Revelation 19 shows riding a white horse at His second coming. But a careful look reveals important distinctions. Christ is wearing "many crowns," not just one, at His return. Instead of wielding a bow, Christ is brandishing a sword with which He strikes the nations.
In contrast to the conquering nature of the rider in chapter 6, Christ wages a war with righteous judgment (chapter 19:11). The Bible further shows that the bow and arrow are weapons of the enemies of God's people (see Ezekiel 39:3 and Ephesians 6:16).
To be consistent with Christ's initial statements we must conclude that this rider represents false messiahs, appropriating Christ's name, but corrupting His plain teaching and leading many into destructive heresy. "Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonder to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:23-24).
It did not take long after Christ's death for a different gospel to invade the Church, causing division and confusion. The apostles dealt with this problem, as evidenced by their writings to the Church. Paul warned the elders of the church at Ephesus to beware of false teachers. "Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves" (Acts 20:28-30).
As the apostle Peter came near the close of his life, God compelled him to give a stern warning to the churches about the apostasy that he saw on the horizon. The second chapter of his second epistle is a powerful rebuke of those who would carry false teaching into the Church. "But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction" (2Peter 2:1).
He went on to say, "Many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed" (verse 2). Peter calls the Church doctrine a "way of truth." It is like a trail of truth along which the faithful have always been walking. Christ called it a straight and narrow way that few find.
Near the end of the first century the apostle John, last of the original 12 apostles, dealt with the brunt of the heresy and persecution on the Church. The reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian saw a virulent strain of antagonism unleashed upon Christians. For a period, the government exiled John to the island of Patmos, where he received the book of Revelation in vision.
The three epistles bearing his name show the tension in the churches and John's desire to warn the members of the devastating impact of false teaching. He wrote of the individual responsibility to examine those teachers who presented themselves as spiritual guides and experts. He knew it was easy to claim divine authority and thereby deceive people into following ideas that were spiritually destructive. "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1John 4:1).
We see the apostles warning of the corruption of the true faith brought by Jesus Christ. Jude summed it up perfectly when he wrote of the need to "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).
Within decades, the truth of God was corrupted by false teachers. The result was teachings that no longer resembled the gospel brought by Christ. Paul had to scold the Galatians for "turning away...to a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6).
From the teachings of these corrupters evolved a church vastly different in doctrines and practices from the Church we see in the New Testament. In fact, there were two Christianities-the followers of Jesus' teachings and the followers of a counterfeit Christianity. Over the centuries, the Roman persecution took its toll. This counterfeit church further compromised the faith under threat of death from the state.
By converting to Christianity, the Roman Emperor Constantine combined the power of the state and the ecclesiastical structure and authority of the church. This created a union of church and state with the ability to create order by squelching dissent. Thus, Constantine and succeeding Roman emperors mounted the symbolic white horse of peace, but in reality their mission was to conquer, in the name of Christ, all those who opposed them.
A final great deception
Christ's warning of false christs coming in His name came to pass. Church history is largely a story of teachings and practices of the counterfeit Christianity, fundamentally different from what the early New Testament Church believed and taught. The story of those who at times recaptured the essence of true Christianity is not easy to find or completely understood. Today, those who strive to practice the teachings that Christ put into His Church are few in comparison to the thousands of churches that call themselves Christian, but in fact, are descendants of the counterfeit group begun in the first century. Christ said that "wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matthew 7:13-14).Yet even for these few, there is danger from a coming deception that will be Satan's final effort to conquer, defeat and enslave humankind, depriving him of his spiritual potential. Christ's Olivet prophecy progresses, in concert with the book of Revelation, toward the final events before His return. He said, "For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:24). The elect, the people of God who "keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 12:17), would even be susceptible to this great deception.
The apostle Paul spoke of this time of deception in 2Thessalonians 2. This prophecy of a man of sin revealed before the day of Christ stands out within Paul's writings. This end-time deception created by a figure "who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped" will sit "in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." In Paul's day, this opposition to the law and doctrine of God was already at work. But prior to the coming of Christ it will grow "according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders" (verses 3-9).
This "son of perdition" matches the description of the figure described in Revelation 13 as "a beast," one of a pair in this section, with two horns like a lamb and speaking like a dragon (verse 11). This person acts in tandem with the first beast (verse 1), actually causing people to worship the first beast with great adulation (verse 12). "He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived" (verses 13-14).
Here is the description of Satan's final attempt to engineer a system based on his lying words of deceit and confusion. That it involves false religion is obvious from all the markers we have seen in the New Testament Scriptures. A man claiming to be God, in the temple of God, performs signs with the intent of persuading men to worship a system that appears to be doing good for the world. This is the final resurgence of a system which God calls "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" (Revelation 17:5). (For more information on this system, request our free booklet, The Book of Revelation Unveiled.).
His allure will likely be to bring about a peaceful solution to a world crisis where no one else has succeeded. The world will wonder in amazement at the ability of this system to impose a "peace" that will seemingly bring security in which the world can prosper economically. It will be a global system unlike any previous system, and it will seem to work.
The ride of the first horseman, false religion, cuts a swath through the nations in the last days, gathering a religious movement without parallel in history. Religion continues to be a powerful force among the nations. A great wave of religious change is moving continually throughout the world. Not only are the large world religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, growing and changing, but countless other new faiths are springing up on a daily basis. Scholars who keep track of the world religious scene identify more than 9,900 distinctive religions. Despite predictions at one time that religion would become extinct, it continues to grow, reinventing itself after the personal interests and whims of people.
False religion marches on at the same time that the world's citizens are desperately in need of hope and solutions for survival. Their desperation provides fertile ground for religious extremism.
The rise of fundamentalist Islam has precipitated a cultural clash between north and south, which could lead to dramatic changes in the world geopolitical structure. Religious-based terrorism has implicated this major world religion in a radical movement, which will drag others, including Christian-professing nations, into a clash of civilizations-one that could trigger the age-ending crisis predicted by Jesus Christ.
Christ spoke of false religion as the precursor to "wars and rumors of wars." The second seal of Revelation 6 is a rider on a red horse said to be taking peace from the earth. Religious strife has often been the cause of war. We will see the connection between the two as we look at the ride of this next horseman. WNP
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