In the last devotion, we saw the opening of the first seal, releasing the first horse of the apocalypse. This devotional reading looks at the opening of the second, third, and fourth seals, releasing the rest.
Nuggets
- Bible scholars think the red horse represents warfare because red is the symbol for blood.
- The black horse, released by the third living creature, is usually said to represent famine.
- The fourth living creature released the pale horse, which represents a death-dealing illness or plague.
The four horses of the apocalypse wage a spiritual battle, making it a conquest for our souls. We’ve looked at the first horse, the white horse. It’s rider could either be Jesus or the antichrist.
Let’s look at the rest of the horses.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Opening the Seals series
The Second Seal
“When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, ‘Come!’ And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword” (Rev. 6: 3-4 ESV)
Bible scholars think the red horse represents warfare because red is the symbol for blood.
But does it? It does end up talking about slayings and swords. That is warfare.
However it is accomplished, the end result is murder.
Is this us killing each other in the streets? (Okay, swords have been upgraded to guns, but work with me here.)
Individual killings are bad. True, they aren’t on the scale as warfare, but it sure feels like it when it upends our worlds.
Oh, yeah. National warfare is bad.
And it feels like the horse is on constant gallop. “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” (II Tim. 3: 1-5 ESV).
Still, the purpose of this horse is to take away earth’s peace. That happens by sowing discord and disunity.
This discord seems to be the impetus for the slayings. That is the cause to the effect of the slayings.
But then, this is also the effect of warfare.
Chaos doesn’t come from God. That comes from Satan. (In fact, this seal and the next two can go either way.)
Peace comes from God. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn. 14: 27 ESV).
We think Satan is father of chaos and confusion. But there are no verses that actually say that.
In fact, God created the evil when He created the good. “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isa. 45: 7 KJV).
But we are talking about the Day of the Lord here. Got isn’t going to come in like, “I’m sorry. Things have to end, but I am going to make it as painless as possible.”
This ties in with Isaiah 63: 1-4.
“Who is this who comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he who is splendid in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? ‘It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.’ Why is your apparel red, and your garments like his who treads in the winepress? ‘I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments, and stained all my apparel. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption had come” (Isa. 63: 1-4 ESV).
Yeah, that is going to frost those who try to limit God to only being a loving God.
This horse can come from God “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God” (Rev. 19: 13 ESV).
John had told us long before this Who the Word of God is. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn. 1: 1 ESV).
The Third Seal
“When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!’” (Rev. 6: 5-6 ESV)
The black horse, released by the third living creature, is usually said to represent famine.
A logical thing to follow widespread warfare is famine. Sometimes, we tend to thing that famine is cause only by drought and other meteorological disasters.
Since famine actually means a scarcity of food, it doesn’t limit the cause of this scarcity. Crops can be destroyed during battles. Distribution centers could be damaged, and the workforce crippled in some way. Distribution itself could be perilous.
Scales are used to weigh food, produce, and money. It could imply — if the horse is from Satan — that fraudulent practices are used to weigh the food.
That, along with the scarcity of food, can cause prices to rise.
What verse 6 is also saying is that basic food such as wheat and barley are extremely expensive while the price of finer products of oil and wine remains unchanged.
There is a struggle for basic necessities in life while luxury items are prevalent.
No, warfare isn’t the only cause for food shortages. There can be other reasons for destroyed crops and distribution centers, insufficient workforce, and subpar distribution.
We can describe this as a struggle for existence.
Isn’t that what Satan wants? He wants us to take our focus off God and put it on this world and our lives here.
Satan wants to make us slaves to sin. “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin’ (Jn. 8: 34 ESV).
And how are God’s children supposed to respond?
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Mt. 6: 25-33 ESV).
Even if the Church is to go through the tribulation, we should always believe in God’s plan and His care for us.
Jesus calls us to come to Him. He will take care of the needs of our physical condition.
That should allow us to focus on our spiritual condition.
But Sadler envisioned difficulties there, too. He wrote,
“But the riding of this horse-rider has been interpreted spiritually to mean this, that in the day of Christ’s power there has not been, nor will be, that plentiful supply of the wholesome and nourishing Word of God which we should have expected.”
Resource
That may seem a strange statement in the Information Age. Yes, the internet has made the readily gospel available.
But is it being successful? Did not the uneducated fisherman have more success in gaining converts in the first century than we do now? Aren’t people turning away from the Church who have previously professed faith in God?
If we are to be nourished by teaching and preaching, why aren’t we? We enter the church On Sunday morning, looking to hear what we’ve always heard. We may do daily devotions, but we really can’t term them as a study of God’s Word.
This creates a famine in our hearts for oh Lord and Savior.
The Fourth Seal
“When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth” (Rev. 6: 7-8 ESV)
The fourth living creature released the pale horse, which represents a death-dealing illness or plague.
The pale horse is a continuance of the famine. It, however, adds pestilence to the mix.
God has used famines and pestilence as punishments before. “I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will rob you of your children. Pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I am the Lord; I have spoken” (Ezek. 5: 17 ESV).
Jesus told us famine would be part of the end times. “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places” (Mt. 24: 7 ESV)
The new aspect is that this horse is going to cause death.
True, because of sin, as soon as we are born, we begin dying. We are appointed a time to die (Ecc. 3: 2).
But this is more than that.
Go back to the end of verse 8. “… And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth” (Rev. 6: 8 ESV).
The they John was taking about was the four horsemen as a group. Warfare, famine, and pestilence all can cause death.
Together, they are going to kill over one fourth of the population of earth through war, famine, plague, and attacks by wild animals.
Have you caught that the four horsemen are going to be disrupting society?
Unfortunately, not all disciples will remain faithful to God. Maybe we confess Jesus as our Savior but didn’t repent and turn from our sins. Maybe we didn’t strengthen our faith through a personal interest in Jesus. Maybe we didn’t endure.
We don’t want this because hell — Hades — follows it.
Yes, some who think they are disciples will find that they are not.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Mt. 7: 21-23 ESV).
That is why we have to make sure that our faith is genuine.
Making the Connections #1
Sadler made an interesting observation. He wrote,
“Since the time of the first preaching of the gospel to the present moment, there have not been twenty years of continued peace amongst the nations and people with which, as we suppose, the various visions in this Book have to do. And this history of war is not occupied with the wars of Christians against heathen, but with the wars of professing Christians against one another. Before the Reformation, when all the Christians of Europe professed to belong to one Church, there was a constant state of warfare amongst them. Since then the state of war has been quite as continuous — not Protestants with Papists only, but Protestants among themselves.”
Resource
Ouch.
That does damage our witness.
But let’s dig in. The flashpoint here was the Reformation, beginning when Martin Luther in the 16-century published his Ninety-Five Theses.
I disagree. The Church was divided before that.
Prior to that, the Catholic Church had already distanced themselves from the Messianic congregations. The Christians of Europe were not the only ones who were God’s children.
We cannot judge who is or isn’t God’s children. However, we have to judge whether what they are teaching or trying to get us to believe comes from God.
Making the Connections #2
Some think Jesus was preaching only a prosperity gospel. Simms disagreed. He wrote,
“And we should the rather have expected this [universal prosperity], because the preaching of the gospel does much to discourage many vices which occasion distress and ruin in this world, such as intemperance, drunkenness, wastefulness, gambling, immorality, etc. But it has not been so. From the first preaching of the gospel there has been just the same hard struggle for sustenance as there was before.”
Resource
Prosperity hasn’t lasted. It always becomes a struggle for existence.
Making the Connections #3
It helps us to accept death when we believe that we have been appointed a time to die. That tells us that our days are numbered.
- “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Ps. 139: 16 ESV).
- “O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Ps. 39: 4 ESV).
- “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90: 12 ESV).
- “Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass” (Job 14: 5 ESV).
We shouldn’t stress on this. We shouldn’t try to figure out what our number is.
Adams said something interesting. He wrote that, since He is in control, God would have us “… for our bodily health, not be too careful, nor too careless.”
Resource
In other words, an obsession for a body that will live forever is not what God wants us to have. This is just one more way in which God wants us to be sober.
God wants us to have an obsession with our spiritual health.
How Do We Apply This?
- Expect physical death to occur at some point.
- Use our faith in what God calls us to do – even when He calls us to not fear death.
- Endure in our faith while we wait to submit to death.
Resource
Father God. Lord, we can see the rider of the white horse as being Jesus, but we can also see him being the antichrist. Give us discernment so that we can remain focused on You. Amen.
What do you think?
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