Rev 6:1-8 The Four Horsemen Working Together 6/19/2005 ßà
#1. This Is God’s Kingdom (1Cor 10:31, Luke 4:5-6, Matt 28:18)
#2. The Same Causes, But Not the Same Effects (Heb 6:4-8, Rom 8:28)
#3. The Effect of the White Horse on History
Please open your Bibles to the Revelation of Jesus Christ, Rev 6:1 (2X). This is the second sermon on Revelation chapter 6. Two weeks ago we have seen “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” who rode out into the world to do the job they had to do. Each one of the four horsemen had a different task and superficially it seemed as if each one of these four horsemen were operating independently. But now we know that this is not the case. In the sermon today we will see how these four horsemen are working together toward the same goal. That is why the sermon today is titled, “The Four Horsemen Working Together” (2X). Let us now read again Rev 6:1-8,
Re 6:1 ¶ And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
Re 6:2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
Re 6:3 ¶ And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
Re 6:4-5 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
Re 6:5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
Re 6:6-7 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
Re 6:8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
This is a very scary passage. Do we realize who is doing this? The Lord Jesus Christ takes full responsibility for sending these four horsemen into the world. It is the Lamb who opened these four seals. It is the Lamb who took the Book out of the right hand of Him that sitteth upon the throne.
The content of this Book was not unknown to the Lamb, because He is God
the Son. He was there when this Book was written. He knew what the purpose was
of this creation, because “All things were made by Him, and for Him,
and without Him was not anything made that was made”. It was not a
surprise to the Lamb when He opened the first four seals that suddenly these
four horsemen appeared, as if these were four genies that suddenly escaped from
a Pandora’s Box. Quite the contrary! He designed it this way! These four horses
and their riders represent powerful forces that are directed by the intelligent
will of God, and they do their work at the bidding of the Lamb. We have already
seen last week that the white horse and its rider is the picture of an
armed warrior, going forth in righteous battle, whose victory is assured him
beforehand. It is a picture of the victorious progress of the Gospel throughout
the world. The red horse and its rider is a picture of an armed warrior,
going forth to battle for the sake of heated passion and wrath among the
nations of the world, and he is going forth to do his work on the earth. It is
a picture of physical war and all the terrible consequences of war on the
earth. The black horse and its rider represent the social contrasts in
the world: the contrasts between poverty and riches, between bare subsistence
and luxurious living. It is a picture of the contrasts between wealth and
miserable poverty. It is the cause of misery, rebellion, revolution and
bloodshed. The pale horse and its rider represent death in all its
various forms. He kills by homicide and by suicide, in pestilence and in
epidemics, by storms and by earthquakes, and more often silently by infection
and disease. All four horses and their riders were unleashed by Christ
when He opened the first four seals of the Book. And thus it is His will, and
in His plan, that there will always be wars in this world, and there will
always be rich and poor in this world, and there will always be death in this
world. In addition, there will always be a certain amount of progress in the
furtherance of the Gospel, which means that there will always be people who
become saved as long as this world exists. The questions before us are now
these: What is the reason for the other three horsemen to ride
simultaneously with the rider on the white horse, and how might this be of
benefit to Christ in bringing to completion the
#1. This Is God’s Kingdom (1Cor 10:31, Luke 4:5-6, Matt 28:18)
Originally God created this world to be His kingdom, to manifest
His glory. God created Adam and Eve, and all mankind, and you and I, for His
glory. We were created to glorify Him, and when we do not do that we are living
in sin. God says in 1Cor 10:31, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink,
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God”. But since we live in a
body that is inclined not to glorify God, we are sinning every day. This is our
nature before our salvation as well as after our salvation. And thus we need a
God who is a merciful Savior. We do not desire a God who will be just with us,
for then He will cast us into Hell, but we need a God who will be merciful to
us. And He placed us in this world. This world is His kingdom. And when we
speak of the kingdom of God in this connection, we refer to all of
creation, in its widest conceivable sense, with earth and sky, animate and
inanimate creation, rocks, plants, animals, and man, as well as the angels in
heaven, with all the hidden and revealed powers which the Almighty Creator has
stored from the beginning in this mighty product of His omnipotent will. God
made that entire world a kingdom over which God is King supreme, and in
it all the name of the King supreme is glorified. And if we ask, “What is
the common purpose of all that exists?” The answer is that “All the
world must reveal the glory of its Creator”. Moreover, God created His kingdom
with order and gradation. It means that there are various officials who carry
out the will of the King in all His kingdom. And of these officials man is
created as the highest creature, destined to rule over all things in the name
of God. Man is made king over God’s creation, but under God. Even as king, man is
always a servant under God. This is how God made Adam. Then the Devil came on
the scene. We must understand that sin and the Devil could not change
the works of God in such a way that it was no more a kingdom. The Devil
could not change the order and the gradation that God established. The
Devil could not change man into another being. The Devil could not
create another kingdom next to the
Please turn to the Epistle to the Romans, Rom 8:19 (2X).
You find Romans immediately after the Acts of the Apostles. Unfortunately we
are accustomed to run in the narrow track of our individual salvation, and
usually we focus heavily on the salvation of our soul. We were conceived
and born in sin, we lived a life that was only pleasing to Satan, and so we
were by nature children of the wrath of God even as others who never become
saved. But God had mercy on us, and God chose to save some of mankind by
sending the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth to take upon Himself the guilt of
all the sins of a certain number of people whom God elected to save, and then
He saved them by paying for the guilt of all their sins on the cross. Then in
the course of history God the Holy Spirit revealed to those same elect that
they became heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, of the
Rom 8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Rom 8:20-21 For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Rom 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Ro 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
And thus we see that the subject matter in this passage is the
redemption of the body. Christ did not just die to save our soul, but He
died to save us body and soul, and to save the world as well. And
therefore there must necessarily be continual war in this world between God and
the Devil, until the
We can read about the declaration of this war in Gen 3:15 where
God says, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy
seed and her seed; He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel”.
Man had become the friend of the Devil, his ally against God. But God declared
here that He will break that alliance by putting enmity into the heart of man
against his ally, the Devil. Before the flood of Noah’s days there was
distinction between the saved and the unsaved in the world. The Bible is silent
about how they were kept distinct from each other. But when “the sons of God
saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took them wives of all which
they chose” the human race tended to become one homogeneous whole. The seed
of the serpent threatened to exterminate the seed of the woman, and God
stepped in: God saved His Kingdom through the flood. Some time later the
human race again attempted to realize one world-kingdom of darkness with the
#2. The Same Causes, But Not the Same Effects (Heb 6:4-8, Rom 8:28)
The same causes do not necessarily produce the same effect. The forces that these four horsemen
symbolize are affecting all mankind without distinction. Please turn in your Bibles to the Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb 6:4 (2X). As the white horse represents the spreading of the Gospel through the world, it affects only the people of God, the elect, and leaves no impression upon the children of the kingdom of darkness. To the seed of the woman the white horseman is a benevolent power, leading them to repentance, salvation, and faith, through which they are translated from darkness to light. But to the seed of the serpent the white horseman becomes a curse, because they remain unsaved and become ripe for judgment. The same causes do not produce the same effects. The receptivity of the people who hear the Gospel is not the same. This is beautifully explained in Heb 6:4-8. Recently you may have heard on a certain radio-station a great deal of misinformation about this passage, as if this passage should support the “depart-out-theology”. But that information is false. Let us read Heb 6:4-8,
Heb 6:4-6 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
Heb 6:7-8 For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.
This is a scary passage. This passage says that it is possible for
men to come to a very close contact with the Word of God and with the blessings
of God’s Kingdom and His covenant. Yet they may fall away so deeply that they
become hopelessly lost, and that they become the bitterest enemies of the
#3. The Effect of the White Horse on History
What is the effect of the first rider on the world? In general it causes separation. If there had never been any influence of the Word and of the Spirit there would never have been a separation between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Grace is the wedge that in this sinful world makes separation and divides all men into two different and opposing camps. On the one hand, a people of God is called into conscious existence. The Spirit of God regenerates, so that the inmost being of man is placed in a new relationship to God and to the entire world. The Christian has become a new man. The people of God have their own life view with regard to every sphere of life and every institution of the world. The home, the school, society must all be controlled by the principles of the Word of God. They are members of God’s covenant, His friends in the world, and subjects of His Kingdom. In principle at least, they want to live the life of that Kingdom also in the present world.
On the other hand, the white horse also has an influence upon the
ungodly. It accentuates their hostility against the Christian community. They
deny the civilizing influence of the Word and the Spirit. They deny that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God. They remain antichristian in their deepest
principle. And thus they also want to establish a kingdom in form like the
Just imagine what would have happened if the white horse would run alone.
There would be no war, no social struggle, no death. The result would be that
the one kingdom world would have been established long ago. Peace and happiness
would reign supreme, and that without Christ. All things would be under control
of this world power, including the church, the state, home, school, business,
industry, and commerce, and so on. And this world power would not leave any
standing room for the true
The same can be said for the rider on the black horse, which symbolizes
the tremendous contrast between rich and poor. Whatever men may do, this
contrast cannot be eliminated. And it is this continual contrast between
poverty and luxury which causes society to be a house divided against itself,
and it is the source of strikes, of social convulsions, of panics, of
insurrections and revolutions. Just think of the bloody scenes of the French
Revolution, and you will be able to understand how the drive of this black
horse prevents the establishment of the kingdom of outward peace & righteousness.
It is not impossible that this social contrast will find a final solution in a
socialistic state. Even in these
Last but not least the pale horse must serve the same purpose. You will
understand this when you realize that death mows away the proper persons at the
proper place at the proper time. When Pharaoh and his powerful army became a real
threat to the children of
And thus, when anyone asks: “Why these horses? Why war? Why social
contrasts? Why death in all its forms?” Then the answer is: to prevent the
premature establishment of the imitation kingdom of Satan; a kingdom that
resembles in outward form the Kingdom of Christ, but which is based on the
principle of enmity against God and against Christ. All these three horses make
the world power too busy with itself so that it will postpone the attack upon
the children of the
AMEN. Let us turn to the Lord in prayer.