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.

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

2306. As regards the innocence possessed by young children, because as yet it is devoid of intelligence and wisdom, it is merely a kind of plane for receiving genuine innocence, which they do receive gradually as they become wise. The nature of young children's innocence has been represented to me by something wooden and practically devoid of life, but which is made living as they are perfected by means of cognitions of truth and affections for good. The nature of genuine innocence was afterwards represented by a very beautiful young child, full of life, and naked. For the truly innocent, who dwell in the inmost heaven and so nearest to the Lord, appear before the eyes of other angels as none other than small children, and indeed as naked; for innocence is represented by 'the nakedness of which they are not ashamed', as one reads of the first man and his wife in paradise. In short, the wiser angels are the more innocent they are; and the more innocent they are the more they appear to themselves as young children. This is why in the Word innocence is meant by early childhood. But the state of innocence will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with further on.