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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?

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The Meaning of the Book of Revelation: the Four Horsemen

Door 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.

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

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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

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Arcana Coelestia #6945

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6945. 'For they will say, Jehovah has not appeared to you' means the Divine within the Lord's Human. This is clear from the meaning of saying' as perception, dealt with often, in this instance the perception of those who belong to the spiritual Church; and from the meaning of 'Jehovah has appeared' as the appearance of the Lord's Divine within His Human. The fact that this kind of appearance is meant by a visual appearance is self-evident; and the fact that 'Jehovah' is the Lord in respect of the Divine itself and in respect of the Divine Human is dealt with in 1736, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2025, 2156, 2329, 2921, 3023, 3035, 5041, 5663, 6281, 6303, 6905. That 'Jehovah has appeared' means the appearance of the Lord's Divine within His Human is also evident from the consideration that His Divine cannot appear to anyone, not even to an angel, except through the Divine Human; nor can the Divine Human except through Divine Truth which goes forth from Him. The subject here in the internal sense is the deliverance of those who belonged to the spiritual Church. Their deliverance was effected by means of the Lord's Coming into the world, see 2661, 2716, 3969, 6854, 6914; and these specifically were saved by means of the Lord's Divine Human, 2716, 2833, 2834.

[2] The implications of this - that those who belong to that Church will not be in possession of faith and so will be unreceptive of what the law from God, represented by 'Moses', says, that is, what the Word says, unless they see signs are as follows: Because they belong to the spiritual Church they do not have a perception of truth from good as people who are celestial do. Instead they acknowledge as the truth all the religious teaching of their Church which they have substantiated for themselves, which means that compared with those who are celestial they dwell in obscurity, 1718, 2831, 2849, 2935, 2937, 3833, 6427, 6500, 6865. This is also made perfectly clear by the fact that they do not at all comprehend how the Lord's Human is able to be Divine, or that God's love within the Human makes it so. For they fix their thought on what is human as they know of it in people generally and do not diverge from this when they think of the Lord; so their minds are in a tangle. The same thing is again made clear by the fact that they also fail to comprehend how a person can be living after death and in that life can have the senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, and smell, or can exist there in a human form. The idea that a person is like this when he lays aside his body along with its senses and members appears to them to be very far from the truth. Thus they are enmeshed in impressions received by the senses and in factual knowledge and illusions that are products of those impressions. If they did not believe therefore that the body is to be rejoined to the soul they would have no belief in any resurrection at all.

[3] From all this one may recognize quite clearly how much obscurity they dwell in regarding the things of heaven. It explains why they cannot have any faith implanted in them at all unless the Lord withholds them from falsities by great force. And since such a force did not exist before the Lord's Coming, only after His Coming when He had made the Human within Himself Divine, they could not be rescued from the lower earth where they were being molested by falsities and be raised to heaven until after the Lord's resurrection, 6914. This then is the reason why it is said that they will not believe and so will be unreceptive of what the law of God, that is, what God's truth, says unless they see proof that it is the truth, which is to say, unless they see signs, described in what follows immediately below.

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