Bible Studies

THE FOUR HORSMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

by Maurice A. Williams
10/17/22
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Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

By Maurice A. Williams

The image of the 4 horsemen have fascinated humans ever since the Apocalypse was written. I have thought about it for quite a while, I finally see a kind of fulfillment of it in my life time.

I was ten years old when WWII started, and I lived to see it end. I found it easy to imagine four horsemen released to wreak havoc among men.

First is the horror of human ambition that not only refuses to serve God but wants to exert one’s own will and be served by others.  It is fueled by human pride and arrogance and by a total disregard of what God wants. It rides out of the human heart, like the white horse, in a spirit of conflict and envy, conquest and tyranny, exploitation and greed.

The second horror is the reaction of humans who, not willing to serve God, are hardly likely to accept servitude to other humans.  Their resentment will spread through the world, like the red horse, in a wave of rage calling for resistance and war also without regard for what God wants.

The third horror is the result of such activities.  The tasks God requires us to do remain undone, and what we have already accomplished is attacked and destroyed.  Ruin results and famine, blind terror, and despair.  These spread behind the combatants like the black horse as a scourge that afflicts the innocent as well as the guilty and ruins everyone’s happi­ness.

In the wake of these three comes the fourth horror: sickness and death, the pale horse.  This is the worst horror of all: humans seemingly abandoned by God, torn from the joys of this life and thrust into the unknown terror of death. These unfortunate experiences must be corrected if humans are to enjoy the extraordinary blessing of being created with free will. These horrors are endemic to the human race. Individual human beings are only in this life a few generations, but human life itself continues generation after generation until the end of the world.

In my lifetime, I have seen the four horsemen still emerging from the human race. I was ten years old in 1941 when the United States entered WWII. Commodore Perry had recently demanded, in 1853, that Japan open up trade with the rest of the world. Japan complied probably reluctantly because no nation likes another nation to tell it what it must do. Japan not only opened trade with the Western World, but started a rapid re-organization of her culture, shedding ancient traditions and commencing modernization. In my youth, I remember the influx of cheaply made windup toys: airplanes, cars, etc. These were the early products of Japan’s industrialization. It brought trade and wealth to Japan.

Behind the scenes, Japan also built up its military, eventually making their navy the most powerful in the world: 10 aircraft carriers with 1500 highly trained carrier pilots, 10 battleships, 38 cruisers, 112 destroyers, 65 submarines and various auxiliary vessels and a huge standing army.

The demand for strategic raw materials was immense. Japan could not easily acquire what they needed to continue building their modern culture. The United States opposed their rapidly growing military might and tried to curtail it by embargos, etc. Japan thus felt they must defeat the influence of the United States in the pacific by war. Here is where I visualized the influence of the four horsemen

The White Horse

Japan launched a surprise naval attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, in order to cripple the American pacific fleet before the US could take action against Japan. It was a bold and daring attack, and it could have worked if all three American carriers had not been taken to sea, but it was wicked for Japan to do this. I remember the shock and fear that I and my young friends felt and the reaction of older Americans and our government.

The Red Horse

The American culture immediately turned against Japan. The Japanese people, especially within Japan, were characterized as sneaky yellow villains. I found out later that Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps. The United States immediately declared war on Japan.  A few months later, General Doolittle led a surprise raid of small bombers transported by aircraft carrier to launch a punitive attack on Tokyo. It caused a lot of damage in Tokyo, killing a lot of people, but it was not a strategic victory. I remember being jubilant about it. The hatred and venom of this retaliation is also wicked.

The Black Horse

American war policy was to beat the Japanese into unconditional surrender. After four years of massive war causing immense casualties, around 80,000,000 total deaths, around 3 million Japanese, 8 million Germans, and 419,400 American. Japan finally reached a condition where it could no longer wage war. To stop the bloodshed, the United States demanded unconditional surrender. Japan refused. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.

The Pale Green Horse

If Japan had an atomic arsenal of its own, the ensuing atomic war could have ruined human life on earth. Today, around nine nations have not merely atomic, but nuclear arsenals. A nuclear war today, I think, would most likely put human life on this planet close to extinction.

Wars similar to WWII have plagued the human race generation after generation – the Babylonian Empire, the Persian, the Greek, the Roman Empire – one after another, all through history. Humans can’t stop this aggression, but the Lamb can. I don’t like the rigors and suffering caused by human pride and aggression, but I trust the Lamb. He is God and knows what He is doing.

A Warning about Free Will

This vision of the four horsemen is a warning about the logical possible results of God conferring free will on humans. If any humans defy God while the devil is still at liberty to tempt them and while they are still saddled with concupiscence, some of them will inevitably pursue their own selfish interests. This will happen until another world war takes place, which would be a total disaster, given the modern capacity for self-destruction. I think the human race is still in that phase, and that phase will last to the end of time.

The vision of the seven seals was meant to teach humanity to realize that free will comes at a very high price. Those humans who use their free will correctly will wind up with a freedom unimagined because they will eventually be free persons having intelligence like God and able to recognize who God really is. They will form a relationship with Him as free sovereign persons that love God and freely choose to obey Him. Free will is an outstanding gift from God. Those who will never choose submission to God will have to be punished.

It cost God quite a bit to gift humans with free will, seeing so many of them throw the gift back into His face and treating Him like a fool with insults and defiantly refusing to obey Him. But those who obey God wind up in heaven in peace and happiness with everything and everyone God created.

And those who defy God wind up in everlasting hell where they are severely punished for treating God like a fool.