Revelation; 4 Horsemen- Running

I want to offer some thoughts on the subject of Revelation ch6 vv1-8.

This is the sequel to my "4 Horsemen- Why?", where I was asking why God would send them. I came to the conclusion that he was responding to the oppression of his people.

My question this time round is; what exactly is John trying to describe? What are these events supposed to look like?

So taking them, firstly, one by one...

In terms of getting an agreed view, the first horseman seems to be the hardest one to pin down.
Matthew Henry and others identify him with the Christ-figure of ch19. Well, they're both riding white horses, true, but they're also carrying different weapons. That one has a sword, this one has a bow. Anyway, if they're supposed to be the expression of God's wrath upon the world, anything benign, like "the spread of the gospel" would seem to be out of place.

"Conquest"? "Conflict"? But what, then, would be the difference between that and "taking peace from the earth", which is supposed to be the job of the next horseman?

"The coming of the Antichrist"? In my reading of the book, this is much too early to be looking for the Beast. I suggested in my "Silence in Heaven" thread (q.v.) that the Beast belongs to the time when the world is trying to recover from the 4 Horsemen.

Popular culture labelled the first horseman as "Plague" or "Pestilence". I'm still not convinced that popular culture got it wrong.

In Psalm 91 vv5-6, the incoming arrow is one of the symbols of pestilence;
"You will not fear the terror of the night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day,
Nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Nor the destruction that wastes at noonday."

We get the same image at the beginning of Homer's Iliad, where the flying arrows of the angry god Apollo are wreaking havoc in the Greek camp.
This seems to be an association of ideas which the ancient world would have recognised.

So I'm opting for "Pestilence" as my label for the first horseman, while grudgingly admitting that other interpretations are available.

The second horseman is being permitted to "take peace from the earth" (which might cover any kind of conflict, including civil wars and rioting). Then the third one comes along with instructions to set prices (very high ones, apparently) for wheat and barley. Tradition has labelled them "War" and "Famine", which seems reasonable.

There's a question which needs to be addressed before we go much further.

Should we understand these "horsemen" as four distinct events, coming at intervals, or should we see them coming together?

Certainly, it's nearly impossible to see them as events in the past, as some people like to do, unless we see them as four distinct events. Then they can be matched up, one by one, with various points in time. The drawback is that any sceptic can question the choice by pointing out, quite rightly, that wars, famines, and epidemics have been happening all through human history.

There's also, in my opinion, something rather odd about the place of "Death" in that kind of scheme. "Death" comes as the last horseman in the series, and only as the last in the series. Yet "Death" is following on from "Famine" and from "War" (and, according to certain obstinate historians, from "Pestilence"), which are causes of death in their own right. If these were all coming one by one, you would expect them, surely, to be accompanied by "Death" one by one?

So, I'm convinced that John's expecting us to see a completely different picture. These horsemen are coming in quick succession, and, once they get going, they're running together. The three causes of death fan out across the world, their paths crossing and criss-crossing, while "Death" itself follows on close behind them to pick up all the corpses. In other words, these are not meant to be four distinct disasters, but the different components of one major, devastating disaster.

Death is accompanied, in v8, by further bouts of war, famine, and pestilence (and by wild beasts). Apart from being a quotation from Ezekiel (but that's a subject for another time), this list might hint at a possible "feedback" effect- that is, as these disasters are developing and merging into one another, they might be helping to aggravate one another.

For example, pestilence and war would disrupt the growing of food and the transportation of food, which would aggravate shortages. Shortages would aggravate the loss of peace, with fighting at all levels of society from supermarkets to international frontiers. Any epidemic which was drastic enough to break down social structures would also help to "take peace from the earth". Finally, any combination of death and social breakdown which left bodies lying around unburied would aggravate the problem of disease.

John says that his "Death" would impact on a quarter of the earth. Does he mean a quarter of the land-surface, or a quarter of the world's population? The second one would be a more convincing expression of God's anger towards the world at large.

If John is really describing something on that kind of scale, then clearly the world hasn't seen it yet. I'm not offering to predict when the world might see it, because I'm not that kind of interpreter.

On the one hand, we can all see- and ATS never stops talking about- the possibility that current events might develop into some kind of catastrophe.

Speculation about pestilence, in the form of mutant flu viruses (or fungal spores in Oregon, getting really up to date)
Speculation about war.
Speculation about economic collapse.
And if these things all came together?

So it seems plausible (I refuse to put it more strongly than that) that an event of the kind John was describing might be on the horizon.

On the other hand- if I was right in calling the 4 Horsemen God's response to the oppression of his people-
Then we should not really be expecting them until God's people are genuinely being oppressed.

excellent subject of pertinance these days...and good work

The attached is, if I can make it work a link to my previous 4 Horsemen thread.

No, doesn't work. back to the drawing board. Sorry

[edit on 24-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

reply to post by DISRAELI


I've heard if you cut the fingers off each of the four horsemen and take their ring and somehow trick the devil in to going back to hell then the devil can be trapped and Armageddon can be thwarted. It must be true, I watched it on TV.

Originally posted by ararisq
reply to post by DISRAELI

 

I've heard if you cut the fingers off each of the four horsemen and take their ring and somehow trick the devil in to going back to hell then the devil can be trapped and Armageddon can be thwarted. It must be true, I watched it on TV.

THAT is funny. SO has anyone took the time to interpret the "Lord of the Rings"? Or any other movies that use the ring of power? Is there some truth to these things or a sliver of truth to everthing?

And who wrote the bible and how long did it take them, interesting.

So many religious texts and destroyed arcane knowledge we don't know. Like where we truly came from.

reply to post by DISRAELI


All right, this is a link to my previous thread on the subject

4 Horsemen-Why?



[edit on 24-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

Originally posted by daddio

THAT is funny. SO has anyone took the time to interpret the "Lord of the Rings"? Or any other movies that use the ring of power? Is there some truth to these things or a sliver of truth to everthing?

OK, gentlemen, if you're going to start referencing Lord Of the Rings, I should point out that you're in completely the wrong chapter of Revelation.

Tolkien explains at one point in the book that the ten "ringwraiths" were formerly kings who were reigning under the power of Sauron. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain which came first. That is, he doesn't say whether they were already kings when they came under Sauron's power, or whether they were under Sauron's power first and he then made them kings. This is very frustrating, because historians like to know this kind of thing.

Anyway, the point is that these ten ringwraith "kings" under Sauron are obviously a straight steal from the ten kings who rule "for one hour together with the Beast" in Revelation ch 17.

Tolkien also hints at "The One" who rules the world. For example, when humans journey to the forbidden land across the sea, we are told that the guardians of it surrender their guardianship back to "The One".

Since Tolkien was a Christian, these Christian hints are not surprising. It would probably be possible to discover a great deal of Chritian allegory inside the book. The self-sacrifice of Gandalf?



[edit on 24-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

[edit on 24-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

reply to post by DISRAELI




I didn't mean to hijack the thread, I just watched this week's episode of Supernatural where they were told they could stop the devil by collecting the rings of the 4 horsemen.

reply to post by GBP/JPY


Thank you for the encouraging comments.

I intend to keep going in the series, anyway, but it's nice to know that the work is appreciated.

reply to post by DISRAELI


This thread seems to have run its course, so let me just add a final note about the way that this series (hopefully) will be going.

I am expecting the next couple of threads to continue ch6;
"Under the altar"
"The sixth seal"

I would then move on to ch12, which would probably take three threads;
"Woman in heaven"
"Fall of the Dragon"
"On eagle's wings"

After a brief break (on holiday), I would expect to take at least four threads to cover ch13
Then move on to deal with various passages about the war between the Beast and the church
Before moving on to the material about the destruction of the Beast.

That is my cunning plan, if the Beast doesn't get me first.

I till think the 4 horsemen are in fact the 4-Power Quartet:

1. Russia
2. China
3. European Union
4. USA

Their paths do cross and criss cross.

I don't know if there is any connection but perhaps some of you may like to look at the painting "Arnolfini Marriage" by Jan Van Eyck in 1434 A.D. Please keep in mind Putin received a multi million $ crown of gold and jewels with a cross on it - similar to that of Czar of Russia, Peter The Great back in 2002. Also look at Jan Van Eyck's "Last Judgement" and the "Adoration of the Lamb".

Do you see an uncanny resemblance in that painting of Putin? My bet is he just may have an Italian connection somewhere in his family roots.

Now I also know for a fact Putin is a religious man; his mother gave him a cross that was blessed in Jerusalem, he never took it off except on one ocasion when his house he built burned down and that cross was the only thing that survived the fire. That house took Putin 6 years to build and it burned down exactly 6 weeks after Putin and his family moved in.

reply to post by bluemirage5


Thank you for that contribution. Well, I'll keep an open mind. Perhaps there is scope for trying to match up the four powers with the different kinds of event John was trying to describe, because I would not want to neglect that side of it.



[edit on 28-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

reply to post by DISRAELI


Perhaps it's possible that this could be a riddle, not so much as an interpretation or how we read these passages. Could it also be possible we have one of 4 choices? When it comes to Torah there is always a hidden message of sorts and could take months or years to figure just afew short passages.

Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by DISRAELI

 

Perhaps it's possible that this could be a riddle, not so much as an interpretation or how we read these passages. Could it also be possible we have one of 4 choices? When it comes to Torah there is always a hidden message of sorts and could take months or years to figure just afew short passages.

To be honest, my philosophy about this book is to look for the more open messages, because I'm convinced that this is where God's real intentions are. I'm sure a lot of Revelation interpretation errs on the side of being over-elaborate, and I feel that my mission is to simplify, simplify. I work on the assumption that most of the real meaning would be accessible to anyone really familiar with the OT, as John's contemporaries would have been. That was the basis of the "Why?" thread.

This chapter is about the disruption of the human world.
I now attach a link to my more recent thread about the disruption of the physical world (which occurs, in my understanding, at a later date);

The trumpets; Battered planet

I'm now attaching a link to my thread on the first chapter of Revelation, which sets the tone for the whole book;

Fear Not

There is now an Index, covering all these Revelation threads, at this location;

Index of Revelation threads

This thread is numbered as #8 in the "order of chapters" list and Biblical reference index.

Originally posted by DISRAELI
OK, gentlemen, if you're going to start referencing Lord Of the Rings, I should point out that you're in completely the wrong chapter of Revelation.

Tolkien explains at one point in the book that the ten "ringwraiths" were formerly kings who were reigning under the power of Sauron. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain which came first. That is, he doesn't say whether they were already kings when they came under Sauron's power, or whether they were under Sauron's power first and he then made them kings. This is very frustrating, because historians like to know this kind of thing.

Anyway, the point is that these ten ringwraith "kings" under Sauron are obviously a straight steal from the ten kings who rule "for one hour together with the Beast" in Revelation ch 17.

Tolkien also hints at "The One" who rules the world. For example, when humans journey to the forbidden land across the sea, we are told that the guardians of it surrender their guardianship back to "The One".

Since Tolkien was a Christian, these Christian hints are not surprising. It would probably be possible to discover a great deal of Chritian allegory inside the book. The self-sacrifice of Gandalf?
[edit on 24-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

My favourite cult is the John Conner and the terminators, but that is an indulgence of off-beat culture that does nothing to help a renaissance. There is even a guy online who believes he is "John Conner" who is going to save us from the terminators, they are robots or people who have the robotic "Chip" of the Mark of the beast. What the hell.

Church has been destroyed by the monetary system that says human beings are not equal to their creator but subservient to the creator, like cattle are subservient to a farmer. Maybe I can be a cyborg someday and preach the gospel of Tolkien and the dwarves and sauron and say I am a true believer in the Faith. No idle exercise.

"Conquest"? "Conflict"? But what, then, would be the difference between that and "taking peace from the earth", which is supposed to be the job of the next horseman?

"The coming of the Antichrist"? In my reading of the book, this is much too early to be looking for the Beast. I suggested in my "Silence in Heaven" thread (q.v.) that the Beast belongs to the time when the world is trying to recover from the 4 Horsemen.

Popular culture labelled the first horseman as "Plague" or "Pestilence". I'm still not convinced that popular culture got it wrong.

In Psalm 91 vv5-6, the incoming arrow is one of the symbols of pestilence;
"You will not fear the terror of the night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day,
Nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Nor the destruction that wastes at noonday."

We get the same image at the beginning of Homer's Iliad, where the flying arrows of the angry god Apollo are wreaking havoc in the Greek camp.
This seems to be an association of ideas which the ancient world would have recognised.

Templars are devout followers of Apollo of which that they misinterpreted at Jesus, because Christ preached turn the other cheek, not go out and slay people who don't share your beliefs. Sad that humans are like a bunch of dumb prairie chickens still clinging on to the old gods of the mythology of the Greeks. "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." What if the Antichrist wants to ride a horse, that changes things. He would probably rather have a blue monte carlo that gets over one horsepower.

Just to clarify;
Nothing in the OP is intended to suggest any particular prophetic signifcance in the year 2012 or the date 21/12/2012