Bibliorum

 

Revelation 6 : The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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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.

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.

3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

4 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.

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.

6 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.

7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

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.

9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Commentarius

 

The Meaning of the Book of Revelation: the Four Horsemen

By Jonathan S. Rose, Curtis Childs

Transparency is needed to sort things out. Before big change happens, God first reveals what’s really going on.

In the Book of Revelation - the last book of the Word - the apostle John describes a series of apocalyptic visions that he experienced during his exile on the Isle of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea.

In one of these visions, he saw four horsemen, the first riding a white horse, the second a red horse, the third a black, and the fourth - named Death - riding a pale horse. These "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" - oft-pictured - are described in Revelation 6:1-8.

What do these horses, and their riders, represent? What do they have to do with us, today? Watch as Curtis Childs and Jonathan Rose explore the hidden Bible meaning of the Four Horsemen in the Book of Revelation, in this video from the Swedenborg and Life Series, from the Swedenborg Foundation.

Plus, to go straight to the source, follow the links below to the places in "Apocalypse Revealed" where Swedenborg explained the inner meaning of this famous Bible story. A good place to start would be Apocalypse Revealed 298.

(Notae: Apocalypse Explained 315; Apocalypse Revealed 262-263, 301, 306, 314, 316, 320, 322-323)

Ludere Video
This video is a product of the Swedenborg Foundation. Follow these links for further information and other videos: www.youtube.com/user/offTheLeftEye and www.swedenborg.com

from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia #3952

Studere hoc loco

  
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3952. 'And he lay with her that night' means the actual joining together. This too becomes clear without explanation. The reason why the explanation of the expressions immediately preceding this has for the most part been limited to giving simply the meanings which they have in the internal sense is that they are the kind of things which cannot be understood unless they are presented separately one after another. For the subject is the joining of truth to good and of good to truth, and this joining together of them is the conjugial relationship meant in the spiritual sense; that is, when with man or in the Church the two are so joined together the heavenly marriage is effected. The arcana of this heavenly marriage have been described in the verses above, where they are shown to be the following: As has been stated, the heavenly marriage is a marriage of good to truth and of truth to good. It is not however a marriage between good and truth which both belong to one and the same degree, but between good and truth which belong one to a lower degree, the other to a higher. That is, it is not a marriage between the good of the external man and the truth of the same, but between the good of the external man and the truth of the internal man; or what amounts to the same, it is not a marriage between the good of the natural man and the truth of the same, but between the good of the natural man and the truth of the spiritual man. It is when good and truth of different degrees are joined together that the marriage comes into effect.

[2] The same applies in the internal or spiritual man. The heavenly marriage is not a marriage between the good and the truth present there but between the good of the spiritual man and the truth of the celestial man, for compared with the spiritual man the celestial man belongs to a higher degree. Nor again is the heavenly marriage between the good and the truth present there, but between the good of the celestial man and the Divine truth which proceeds from the Lord. From this it is in addition evident that the Divine marriage itself within the Lord is not a marriage between the Divine good and the Divine truth present in His Divine Human but between the Good of the Divine Human and the Divine itself, that is, between the Son and the Father, for the Good of the Lord's Divine Human is that which in the Word is called 'the Son of God' and the Divine itself that which is called 'the Father'.

[3] These are the arcana contained in the internal sense present within the things said about the dudaim. Anyone may see that there is some arcanum hidden within them. For the following details - those about Reuben's finding dudaim in the field and Rachel's desiring them, and, so that she might acquire them, about her agreeing to their husband's lying with Leah, and about Leah's going out to meet Jacob when he came from the field in the evening and her saying that she had hired him for the dudaim - would not have been important enough for them to be mentioned in any historical description in the Word unless something Divine had lain hidden within them. Exactly what that something Divine is nobody can know unless he knows what is meant by the sons of Jacob and by the tribes named after them, and also unless he knows the flow of ideas belonging to the subject dealt with in the internal sense, and on top of this unless he knows what the heavenly marriage is. For that marriage is the subject; that is to say, the joining of the good of the external man to the affection for the truth of the internal man is the subject. But to enable this arcanum to be seen more clearly, let a further illustration be given.

[4] The truths of the external man are the facts and the matters of doctrine which he acquires first through parents and also teachers, after that through books, and at length by his own endeavours. The good of the external man is the pleasure and delight which he finds in those facts and matters of doctrine. Facts which are essentially truths, and delights which are essentially good, are joined together, but these do not constitute the heavenly marriage with him, for even with people who are governed by self-love and love of the world and who are consequently under the influence of evil and falsity, facts, and indeed matters of doctrine, are joined to delights; but they are the delights that go with self-love and love of the world, to which truths are able to be joined. All the same, such people are outside the heavenly marriage. But the heavenly marriage exists in a person when pleasure or delight, which essentially is the good of the external or natural man, stems from spiritual love. That is, the heavenly marriage exists with him when that good stems from love towards the neighbour, towards his country or the general public, towards the Church, towards the Lord's kingdom; and it exists even more fully when it stems from celestial love, which is love to the Lord. For when that spiritual or celestial love passes from the internal or spiritual man into the delight of the external or natural man and fashions that delight, it is then joined to the facts and the matters of doctrine of the external or natural. But such a marriage cannot exist with the evil, only with the good, that is to say, with those who have those things as the end in view. But see what has been said already in 3286, 3288, 3314, 3321, about the influx of the internal or spiritual man into the external or natural man.

[5] Once acquainted with these arcana one may now come to see the overall meaning of the individual expressions, the explanations of which in preceding paragraphs was limited simply to giving their individual meanings in the internal sense, those expressions and their meanings being these: 'Reuben', who means the truth of faith, which is the first stage of regeneration, 'found dudaim'; 'he brought them to Leah his mother' who means the affection for external truth; 'Rachel' who means the affection for interior truth 'desired them', and they were also 'given to her'; Leah therefore 'lay with Jacob her husband' who means the good of truth within the natural man. Likewise the expressions in what comes after this: Sons were born to Jacob by Leah, 'Issachar and Zebulun', by whom things to do with conjugial love and so with the heavenly marriage are meant and represented; and after this, 'Joseph' was born, by whom the Lord's spiritual kingdom - the marriage itself, which is the subject here - is meant and represented.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.