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.

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

2733. There were certain spirits who, from a practice followed by them during their lifetime, were molesting me with particular skill. They did so by means of a rather gentle wave-like influx, resembling the ordinary influx from upright spirits. But I perceived that within that influx trickery and the like were present, to entice and to deceive. At length I spoke to one of them who, I was told, had during his lifetime been the commander of an army. And because I perceived that licentiousness was present in the ideas comprising his thought, I talked to him about marriage in the language used by spirits, which is illustrated with representatives and which expresses one's sentiments completely and many things in an instant.

[2] He said that during his lifetime he had thought nothing of adulterous behaviour. But I was given to tell him that all adultery is quite unspeakable, even though to those who are guilty of it it does not seem - because of the delight they take in it and the persuasive beliefs that result from it - to be unspeakable, but even allowable. I said that he might also know this from the fact that marriages are the seminaries of the human race and therefore the seminaries of the heavenly kingdom as well, and for that reason must not on any account be violated but be held sacred. He might also know, I continued, that adultery is unspeakable from the fact, which he ought to know because he was now in the next life and in a state of perception, that conjugial love comes down from the Lord by way of heaven, and that from that love, as from a parent, mutual love is derived, which is the foundation on which heaven rests. And he might know it also from the fact that when they merely move towards heavenly communities adulterers become aware of their own stench and cast themselves away from there down towards hell. He might at least have known that violence done to marriages was contrary to Divine laws, and contrary to the civil laws of all people, as well as contrary to the genuine light of reason, since it is contrary to order, both Divine and human, not to mention many considerations besides these.

[3] But he replied that he had never known such things during his lifetime, nor had he thought about them. He wished to reason whether what he had heard was so, but he was told that in the next life truth leaves no room for reasonings, for reasonings lend support to a person's delights, and so to his evils and falsities. I went on to tell him that he ought first to think about the things he had been told, because they were true; or at least he ought to think from the principle very widely known in the world that nobody ought to do to another what he does not wish that other to do to him. If some other man, I asked, had in a similar way seduced the wife whom he loved - as men love their wives at the beginning of every marriage - would he not also, when feeling irate about what had occurred, have expressed, if he spoke from that feeling, a loathing for all adultery? Also, being a man with mental ability, would he not have confirmed himself more than others against all adultery, even condemning it to hell? Thus he might have judged himself from what he possessed within himself.