I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Revelation 4-8.

    It struck me as I read this part of John’s vision that part of what makes this hard to understand is that John’s vision consists of three elements: things which will happen and appear just as John describes them (although we will not necessarily see them the same way), things which appeared in his vision symbolically and as metaphors, and things which are a result of John being in a dream state. I do believe that these last are also metaphors and similes, they just are not based on anything we can find reference to in any other literature of the time or before. They are unique to this vision experienced by John.

    John describes the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse here. I find it interesting that in John’s vision we have no mention of the four riding together. Part of the reason we view them as riding together is because their are a similar group of four horsemen in a vision seen by Ezekiel. I am quite confident that the similarity to Ezekiel’s four horsemen is not a coincidence, but I, also, do not believe that they refer to the same four horsemen. This is the first place where you can see that the writer believed that his vision applied to the Roman Empire (there are elements in the description of the horsemen, especially the first, which connect to the Roman Emperors of his time). For me, reading the descriptions of each horseman suggests that they follow after each other. The first horseman rides fourth victorious, ushering in a golden age. The second horseman rides fourth bringing disorder and war, riots, civil war, and, perhaps, invaders. The third horseman brings the economic devastation, and famine, which often follows such events. Finally, the fourth horseman brings pestilence and death, which, again, usually follows the preceding two. Thinking about it, if we study history we see that these four appear again and again in this very pattern. A conqueror rises up in one nation, conquering the surrounding nations. He is followed by social disorder, civil war, and, sometimes, reverse invasion, as his successors battle each other for the power he had gathered to himself. The social disorder, the civil war, and the invasions cause economic disruption which will include famine (with or without invasions). Finally the land is devastated by disease and death.