Who is the enigmatic fourth horseman named Death, and what do his role and prior missions reveal about his devastation at the end of this age?
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When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.
–Revelation 6:7-8
The Mysterious Fourth Horseman – Death
Of all of the horsemen of the apocalypse, I find the fourth one the most mysterious. For starters, he is the only horseman of Revelation 6 given a name. And his name is a word used 459 times in the Bible, sometimes in lowercase and other times capitalized. This leads to several questions:
- is death a spirit or a personified concept,
- a fallen genocidal angel or an obedient servant,
- an enemy of humanity or a catalyst to our redemption?
For these reasons, the fourth horseman is one of the most mysterious and elusive of the horsemen.
It is easy to conclude from a cursory read of Revelation 6 that the fourth horseman is Death. By that, I mean a spirit that brings death to all things. However, I do not believe we can take the fourth horseman’s name at face value. And like the other horsemen, I believe most end-times commentators misunderstand his nature and effect on the world.
The fourth horseman embodies some of the oldest themes in the Bible; death, the duo of death and Hades/Sheol, and the quartet of famine, pestilence, the sword, and wild beasts. To understand this horseman, we need to go back to the earliest books in the Bible. There we can uncover the truth behind his nature, role, and deadly purpose.
Is Death a Spirit?
When I first read about the fourth horseman called Death, I wondered if he was a spirit of all death; a concept such as the grim reaper to the angel of death. To answer this, I went back to where the Bible first introduced death – the Garden of Eden.
As almost any Christian can tell you, God warned Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but Eve disobeyed His command, and Adam followed. Once he and Eve committed this disobedient act, God first cursed the serpent, then Eve, the land, and Adam, telling him, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.“
Death was the curse God placed upon Adam that removed his immortality as a penalty for his disobedience. The death in this first account is a curse, not a spirit.
Death (lowercase) is ubiquitous, affecting every microbe, plant, animal, and person. Unlike death, spirits have a locality; except for God, they cannot be everywhere at once.
There are several times the Bible uses an uppercase Death; however, these appear to be personifications of death, literary devices, not a spirit’s name.
Revelation is the first book where we conclusively find a spirit named Death. This spirit, the fourth horseman, brings death’s curse, so he is aptly named Death. However, this does not mean that he is a spirit behind all death.
So who is this mysterious horseman named Death? Fortunately, Moses provides a link between the curse and the horseman.
The Curse for Disobedience
Deuteronomy 28 sets the stage for the trials and tribulations of the Israelites and the tribulation of our days.
In this chapter, Moses described the blessings of obeying and curses of disobeying God’s commandments, especially worshipping other gods. These curses were centered around famine, pestilence, the sword, and wild animals eating the transgressors’ carcasses. The first three of these penalties are repeated 36 times in the Bible, including in the account of the fourth horseman.
Moses then prophecied in Deuteronomy 32 through a song taught to him by God. He sang that the Israelites would break the first two commandments and follow false gods, bringing God’s wrath upon them. And what would be the form of His wrath?
They will be starved by famine, eaten by plague, and bitterly stung.
I will send the teeth of wild animals against them, along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust.
The sword will make people childless outside, and terror will do so inside; they will destroy both the young man and the virgin,
–Deuteronomy 32:24-25
the infant and the gray-haired man.
As you can see, these are the same curses as those spread by the fourth horseman. Why is this significant?
Because if the penalties in these verses match, then the transgression that resulted in the penalties should also match. So by knowing why God pronounced these curses in Deuteronomy, we will know why the fourth horseman will be permitted to bring these four curses upon the earth. And that reason has to do with Jesus.
The Reason the Fourth Horseman Rides
Moses’ prophetic song in Deuteronomy 32 tells us why God will send these curses at the end of this age.
Then he deserted the God who made him, and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt. They made him jealous with other gods, they enraged him with abhorrent idols.
They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known; to new gods who had recently come along, gods your ancestors had not known about.
You forgot the Rock who fathered you, and put out of mind the God who gave you birth.
–Deuteronomy 32:15-18
As revealed through the New Testament, Jesus is the Rock. And while Moses’ song was specific to the Israelites, Jesus came for all; the Jews and the gentiles.
The fourth horseman will be unleashed upon the earth to bring the curse of death for the disobedience of a world that treats Jesus with contempt and follows other gods despite the revelation that Jesus is Lord.
Now that we know why the horseman rides, and his weapons, we can seek his work elsewhere in the Bible. A few places in the Bible seem to have the horseman’s hoofprint, but one is particularly relevant to our times.
The Wind that Came Against Israel
Did the fourth horseman have a role in the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar? – Image from Pixabay
Throughout much of Jeremiah’s prophecies, he proclaimed the destruction to come upon Judah by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. He proclaimed this was punishment for their disobedience, primarily for worshipping other gods. He consistently warns of the trio of judgments: famine, pestilence, and the sword, mentioning them 15 times.
But Jeremiah starts his prophecies of impending doom with a reference reminiscent of the four horsemen by their other name, the four winds of heaven (Zechariah 6).
“A scorching wind will sweep down from the hilltops in the wilderness on My dear people…, a wind too strong for that will come at my bidding. Yes, even now I, Myself, am calling down judgment on them… The roar of his chariots is like that of a whirlwind. His horses move more swiftly than eagles.” I cry out, “We are doomed, for we will be destroyed!” – Jeremiah 4:11-13
Jeremiah’s words are intriguing because they are similar to the horsemen’s descriptions in Zechariah 6.
- “Wind” – the angel speaking in Zechariah 6 says this of the horsemen; “These are the four winds of heaven…”
- “Come at My Bidding” – the angel in Zechariah’s vision finishes the above sentence with, “going out after standing before the Lord.“ This statement matches Revelation 6, which states the four living creatures around God’s throne summon the horsemen.
- “Calling down judgment“- the four horsemen bring judgment. As the angel in Zechariah 6 stated, “those who are going to the land of the north have appeased My wrath.“
- “His chariots… his horses” – The horsemen are described with chariots and horses in Zechariah 6. “four chariots were coming forth…“
- “More swiftly than eagles” – While a metaphor, it is interesting that the living creature who looks like an eagle is the one who summons the fourth horseman. There is a connection between each living creature and the respective horseman they summon. I will go into this shortly.
The Fourth Horseman Facilitates Israel’s Defeat and Exile
Jeremiah specifically ties Israel’s disobedience to the four curses of Deuteronomy; famine, pestilence, the sword, and wild beasts. But He also gave the people a choice; either surrender to Nebuchadnezzar and live or remain in Jerusalem and die. He gave King Zedekiah a similar choice.
But Zedekiah and many people listened to the false prophets, who were predicting victory through their divination and magic. As a result, many people died, the survivors fled or were exiled to Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar killed Zedekiah’s children before his eyes as his last visual memory before blinding him and carrying him off to Babylon.
The curse of death, the work of the fourth horseman, brought about this defeat. Jeremiah said, “You and your people are right in saying, ‘War, starvation, and disease are sure to make this city fall into the hands of the king of Babylon.'”
So what we see in the case of Israel’s visit by the fourth horseman is that these curses were not just a penalty but also had a secondary purpose. That purpose was to exile the Jews to Babylon. God used the curses to force the people into exile, which was His will.
So, if the fourth horseman facilitated the conquering and exile of Israel, could we expect he would assume a similar role at the end of this age?
The Role of the Horsemen
As I wrote in the prior posts on the horsemen, their role is to tear down the established order to bring about a new order. In this new order, the beast will rise and corrupt until sin has reached completion and Jesus returns to take dominion and rule.
The fourth horseman, Death, is not the enemy Paul referred to when he wrote, “the last enemy that will be abolished is death.” Nor is he the one to be destroyed when “death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.”
The enemy Paul and John were referring to is the lowercase death, God’s curse on the world for Adam and Eve’s disobedience. It will be destroyed because disobedience and rebellion will be destroyed.
Conversely, the horsemen are not enemies of the saints. They operate in obedience to God and answer to the throne. We see this in Zechariah 6 when the horseman presented themselves to the Lord to take on a mission. Also in Revelation 6, when the living creatures summon the horsemen.
The fourth living creature calls the fourth horseman for his mission. In Revelation 4, this creature is said to be “like an eagle.” His eagle-like appearance portrays Jesus’ divinity as eagles are often associated with the heavens in the Bible. Like the other horseman, the fourth horseman is like an inverse reflection of the living creature who calls him. As the eagle represents the heavens, the fourth horseman represents the underworld, so Hades follows after him.
The fourth horseman is part of a catalyst that God uses to bring about world change. This catalyst comes through coalescing all four of the horsemen’s roles to bring massive disruption to the earth. We can understand this when we look at the impact of all four horses together.
The Fourth Horseman’s Role Among the Four Horsemen
As in the case of Babylon’s siege of Judah, the fourth horsemen’s purpose is not just to kill, but to scatter the populations into exile. This flood of refugees will bring about additional turmoil and social conflicts that contribute to the collapse of governments.
Each of the horsemen alone can cause significant upheaval of the established order. But when acting together, they compose a world-shaking team.
- The first horseman will bring false kings/prophets to ultimately conquer the established governments,
- the second will take peace, facilitating war and conflict in all aspects of society,
- the third will bring famine, affecting the lower classes most significantly and causing social uprising, and
- the fourth will bring the curses of death to a fourth of the earth, causing strife and floods of refugees.
Together, they will destroy the establishment and make way for the beast’s reign.
So do we see signs of the fourth horseman in the world today?
I will address that in the next and last post in this series.
Related Posts:
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Insights You Have Never Heard
The First Horseman of the Apocalypse: Past Victories Tell of What’s to Come
The First Horseman is Riding and Conquering Today
Wars of the Second Horseman and the Christian Call to Arms
The Third Horseman Rides but His Purpose is Not What You Think