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.

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

5. That is enough at present about the new heaven; now for the new earth. The new earth means a new church on earth, since whenever one church comes to an end the Lord raises up a new one. You see, the Lord makes sure that there is always a church on earth, because the church is the means by which the Lord is joined to the human race, and heaven is joined to the world. This is because the church is where the Lord is known and where we find the divine truths by which we are joined to heaven and the Lord. (See the booklet Last Judgment 74 on the fact that a new church is being established at the present time.)

"A new earth" means "a new church," as we learn from a spiritual understanding of the Word, because in the spiritual meaning "earth" does not mean the land itself, but the people there and their worship of God. That is the spiritual equivalent of "earth. " Then too, when we find a mention of "the earth" [or "the land"] in the Word with no further regional specification, it means the land of Canaan, and the land of Canaan was where the church had been ever since the earliest times. As a result, all the particular places there and thereabout that are mentioned in the Word, including mountains and rivers, have come to represent and symbolize inner realities of the church-what we speak of as its spiritual side. That is why, as just noted, "the land" in the Word refers to the church-because it means the land of Canaan, and the same holds true for "the new earth" here. This is what has led to the common practice in the church of referring to heaven as "the heavenly Canaan. " ¹

In the spiritual meaning of the Word, "the land of Canaan" means the church, as has been shown in various passages of Secrets of Heaven, including the following: The earliest church (the church before the Flood) and the ancient church (the church after the Flood) were in the land of Canaan: 567, 3686, 4447, 4454, 4516, 4517, 5136, 6516, 9325. All the specific places then came to represent the kinds of things we find in the Lord's kingdom and the church: 1585, 3686, 4447, 5136. That is why Abraham was commanded to go there-because symbolic religious practices would be instituted among his descendants through Jacob and a Word would be written whose most outward sense would be made up of the representations and symbolisms found in that place: 3686, 4447, 5136, 6516. That is why "the land" and "the land of Canaan" in the Word mean the church: 3038, 3481, 3705, 4447, 4517, 5757, 10568.

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