Revelation 6:3-4 – 2024 Jul 25 – The False Peace Unravels

In our text this evening, a lot has been written over time about who the rider on the red horse is and what his activity will be, but I don’t think many Bible scholars have seen the real breadth and depth of the topic. People, including me, have named this rider “War,” but as time has progressed, so has my understanding of the passage. We are not speaking of nation against nation only, although that will be an aspect of this. It will be person against person, son against father, daughter against mother, sister against brother, husband against wife on the day this rider strikes horse hoof to earth. It will be truly frightening in its display, and if you find yourself caught in this, my only counsel is to hide as best you can. You will see why as we go.

Many commentators over time have had many different things to say about this rider. For example, Matthew Poole, one of the Puritan commentators on Scripture was at least a partial preterist, believing that all or at least much of this was fulfilled before the destruction of the temple in AD70, or at least by AD95 when John penned Revelation. If you read through his commentary, he seems concerned with how this represents the attacks of Rome on the Jews and Christians of the era, listing the 27 Roman Emperors between Nero and Constantine in Latin (the work was in English). It may have had significance in relation to those events, but I don’t think it expresses the complete story.

Evangelist Billy Graham in his book Approaching Hoofbeats turned the rider into a commander in a coming nuclear war and used it, as evangelists are wont to do, as an opportunity to advance the gospel to a lost world. Whatever you may think of Billy Graham, there is perhaps a modicum of truth in his view as well. However, I do not think the imagery of the original Greek is met in this kind of reference, which at best is a motivation to preach the Gospel to such individuals who may be moved by that kind of language, and there are some.

Now I admit that this text from Matthew exactly parallels the first four seals in John’s Revelation, the sixth chapter. We are looking at this one rider at a time to see if we can’t understand the rider himself and put him into some kind of overall context and add to the understanding that we have about the events that are supposed to be presented here. Some have tried to impose history as a pattern over the seals to make them fit into history and proclaim these things as a progressive revelation, and maybe that’s true, but it forces too many misinterpretations onto the text itself, especially when viewed in the context of the original Greek. One such commentator is the great Puritan Matthew Henry, by the way. His view of this passage is that the first rider must be Christ, and represents the early church and its growth. The second rider in his view is war, beginning with the persecution of the church. I personally do not agree with this interpretation, but I can see how he was trying to make the text fit into history. The problem this introduces is that of eisegesis, reading into the text. We are supposed to read out of the text, not the other way around. This does NOT invalidate everything Matthew Henry says about the Scriptures, by the way.

Doctor John MacArthur, who is surprisingly brief on this topic, relates this rider back to the first rider, saying that he is in fact an agent of the Antichrist, and this in my opinion is beginning to be over the target. If we compare the outline the Lord Jesus gave us in Matt. 24, we see this: “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.” (vv.4-8)

In reading that passage from what is known by theologians as the Olivet Discourse, we can see a sort of harmony in the two passages, and that the two passages are speaking about primarily the same set of events. This can get a little harder if we involve the supposedly parallel passages from Mark and Luke, but I’m of the opinion that Luke at least may have been a separate conversation with a different but related point. I don’t want to get into it in this study because I don’t want to bog us down in what will be useless detail, but it is worth mentioning. We can talk about it once we’re off the air this evening. I’m not running from the discussion, I just want people to see clearly, and the part of the text we read in Matthew actually matches Luke through this part.

With all that said, I broke the text down the same way I did the last section. Verses 3 and 4 are titled:

The Second Seal – The Rider On the Red Horse

3-4: The False Peace Falls Apart

We’ll get into that right now.

The Second Seal – The Rider On the Red Horse

To review, last time we looked at the rider on the white horse, that some, even Puritan Matthew Henry of Matthew Henry Commentary fame, identify as Christ. We did not agree with Matthew Henry’s analysis, this is clearly NOT the Christ, because the Christ, also known in Heavenly circles as God the Son, would never take an order from a created being, and this individual was clearly ordered to come forth by an angelic being, one of the four living creatures. This means it is not Christ our Lord.

Instead, we concluded that this was none other than the man of sin himself, having the bow and no arrows, and yet still conquering the world not with military might but with diplomatic prowess. We didn’t get far into the details, but various texts we looked at tell of this individual bringing about the impossible, actual peace in the Middle East between the Jews and their enemies that surround them, even today. We’re watching that develop on the news nightly, and last October 7, we started to see the real violence that is inspired by the nation of Israel on a global basis. First Hamas, now Hezbollah, all underpinned by Iran, the ancient Persian empire, in their desire to wipe Israel from the face of the earth. It has been my experience over the years that when you can start cross-referencing things in Scripture with the evening news, you should start paying attention because something is going on.

The signing of this peace treaty between Israel and its enemies marks the very beginning of a seven-year period spoken of by Daniel the prophet as his 70th week. It was further called “the time of Jacob’s trouble” by the prophet Jeremiah. Ezekiel 36-38 tells the story in prophetic detail. If you see this individual posing for the photo op of all time, you’re in the final 7-year period of planet Earth known as the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord is the time on earth when the Lord Himself, Creator of Heaven and Earth, pours out all the wrath he has stored up since the beginning against mankind’s sin and depravity until every last sinner that will not turn from their sin is punished for their willing disobedience.

The time of which I now speak is a terrible time to be a believer on earth, although uncountable multitudes will turn to Christ and be saved in that period of time. It will cost most of them their lives in those days that the man of sin rules in those last 7 years. The fact that it is limited to that 7-year period is in itself a mercy or there would be no one left alive at the end, and that’s what the Scriptures say. We can see now the things that will be required for that level of control falling into place. Supercomputing, digital currencies, the ability to monitor every living human all at once in real time, what passes for acceptable thought, the ability to enforce what you THINK about by computerized enhancements, all of those things have been taken from headlines I have personally read over the last month or so. Add wars, rumours of wars, and all of the other stuff, and there is no doubt in my mind what is coming. It seems after all that analysis that it is indeed coming soon.

Last time, we saw the man of sin come to conquer. He conquers, according to the prophets, by creating a false peace between Israel and its enemies. That is the rider on the white horse. It is my opinion based on the wording of Scripture that this is the beginning of the period of the wrath of God beginning to be poured out on the unrepentant of earth. And it all began with the Lord Jesus Himself opening the first seal of the Scroll that the Father gave Him, the title deed to the universe, as some have said. The worst and darkest leader of all history is now squarely in authority. It fits the pattern of prophecy in Scripture. Just to remind us all, when God begins to judge a people group, he gives them lousy and evil leaders. When He begins to judge the planet as a whole, He will give the planet the worst, most evil leader ever, and that individual will be disguised as an angel of light.

This time, we watch all of that false peace begin to crack and ultimately fall apart because he is not able to hold it together. It is the rider on the red horse – the violence that is in the heart of all those who will not repent and follow Christ. With that, we’ll get into the chapter.

3-4: The False Peace Falls Apart

Because the Antichrist is a mere created being, and because as that created being he has exercised his own free will to fight against the Living God, anything He does will lead to decay and rot despite his best intentions. He is still a much smarter being than we are collectively. His peace plan will probably be viewed as absolute genius, and it will be from a worldly perspective. However, I will remind us all that that bow had no arrows, and that solution, which will be lauded by every power on earth, will probably still have its opponents, and these opponents will likely rebel, some with their national military. The Kings of the East are mentioned here and in this context later in Revelation, and in Daniel as well, and maybe other places. I personally view this as an intervening period between the first and second riders. When the second rider arrives, the trouble will begin for Antichrist in earnest. Let’s see what we can in the text.

3: When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.”

There is a certain pattern here. One living creature called forth the first horse with its rider. A second one calls for the second horse with its rider. I know I’m being a little free with my. Thinking here, but in my thinking, this intimates a long-standing plan, the parts of which have been known by those giving the orders now for a long time. For John, as he gives the description here, there is no delay in these events. For the people on the earth, there may be some temporal delay. In fact, as we go through all of the seal judgments, and then the trumpet judgments, and finally the bowl or censer judgments, you may notice that these events will get closer and closer together in time. The time is not known, but the order of events is laid out for us here in a logical order based on what we have seen in every armed conflict on the planet. An engineered peace with which not everyone agrees leads to an armed conflict, which in turn leads to famine, disease, and ultimately death (and it will surprise no one that those are the next two riders, whom we will consider individually). It is called forth by God Himself as God the Son breaks the seal. The long-prepared angelic seraph calls to the horse and rider and then commands the rider to work the work that has been prepared for him by God from the beginning of the plan. That is the kind of thing that I saw in the text here. And there is more. Next verse.

4: And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.

The first thing we see is a red horse. This is not a cinnamon-coloured horse like I had growing up or a paint (a horse breed, not a wall treatment). The Greek tells us it was a fiery red with the word pyrrhos. It is the same “red” as mentioned in connection with the red dragon later in the book. This horse and its rider symbolically come straight out of the hell of fire is what I believe this is describing. This is no human rider.
Now it says “it was given to him” in reference to his particular assignment, which we will get to momentarily. Who gave him that assignment? You could argue that it was given to him by the seraph that called him forth, or you could suppose that God Himself spoke to the individual. In either case, that assignment was unquestionably given in front of Yahweh if not by Yahweh or Yeshuah Himself, meaning at least tacit approval. I am of the opinion that this was prepared for this rider from the very beginning, and now he is being told to execute his God-given mandate. What was that mandate?
It is nothing less than to take peace from the earth. I can remember as a child of 11 or 12 walking in my front driveway on a snowy Christmas Eve and really wishing for peace on the earth. I wondered why people couldn’t get along. I think it was 1979 for some reason, I was thinking about the coming new decade in about a week’s time maybe. I remember praying as an unbeliever, asking God to bring peace on earth, even just for a day. In 1979, the Vietnam War hadn’t been over all that long, Russia had invaded Afghanistan, the USA and the USSR were in a state of war called the “Cold War,” and everyone was under the threat of nuclear annihilation. I was not a unique individual. This is the opposite of that child’s desires. There will be NO peace anywhere. In fact, it’s going to be worse than anyone would like to think about, I’m certain.
And that men would slay one another. The word here for “slay” is an unusual one. It isn’t the normal word for “kill,” which would be something like thanatoo (to put to death) or phoneuo (to murder). It is a form of the word sphazo, meaning to butcher or slaughter, especially a victim for sacrifice. This will likely be more than a figurative application here, because we already sacrifice the interests of others before our own, when as believers in and followers of Christ we should be doing the exact opposite. This will be our tendency to put ourselves first brought to physical expression, a slaughter of our friends and neighbours in person-to-person fashion. This is an idea that has been utilized in popular cinema in a movie called The Kingsmen. A madman (played effectively by Samuel L. Jackson) invents a device that will cause people to go insane and kill the person standing next to them any way they can. One of the Kingsmen even falls victim to it. Sons against fathers, fathers against sons, husbands against wives, mothers against daughters, like that. One gets the impression that it will be instantaneous and worldwide insanity. This is more than just an international conflict between armies. This seems to be at the individual level. This can be used in a sense as proof from absence of the pretribulation rapture position. There are no peacemakers left to intercede because Jesus has taken them all to be with Himself. What a terrible time to be alive.
Pastor Billy Crone puts it after this fashion. Why would anyone choose to go through that when we know the way of escape in the here and now is to repent of our sins and believe Jesus died in our place to pay for all our sins? Beloved, Peter said it best and in context on this thought: “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? AND IF IT IS WITH DIFFICULTY THAT THE RIGHTEOUS IS SAVED, WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE GODLESS MAN AND THE SINNER?” (1 Pet. 4:17-18). Verse 18 is a quote from Proverbs 11:31, by the way. So much for unhitching the Old and New Testaments. Much of the New Testament is quotation from the Old Testament! So Andy Stanley is wrong. Wrong and heretical, just like his forefather Marcion, after whom this heresy is named. My point is that no one should choose this fate when they can turn now. People still will refuse to turn to Christ though, and for the same old tired and debunked reasons we hear all the time. It is, according to John Owen, their sin killing them. Men will slaughter one another in the most violent fashion possible. Still think this isn’t the wrath of God being poured out on the planet? Then I encourage you to think again, this time prayerfully and not rooted in the pride of your so-called intelligence. Especially if you can read Greek or if you can access accurate translations and have the Holy Spirit to help you. I heard this all through Bible College during pastoral training: “If you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, you’re an idiot of the first order. There will be no secret rapture.” To those august professors, I say, look I still respect you even though you called me names. And if there is a pretribulation rapture, it will not be a secret. There are already explanations being floated and preset to explain such a phenomenon away. And I noticed it’s always the pre-trib position under attack. There is no such attack for pre-wrath, post-trib, or even mid-trib positions. But enough about people just trying to preserve their pride and fit in. I believe it is this violence and the violent woes to come from which the Lord is saving His church, His bride. Do you think Jesus would let His people go through any of this? You are not thinking clearly or prayerfully I suspect. And there is further proof of the whole “slaughter” theme still to come in the verse.
And a great sword was given to him (the rider). I once heard a brother who thought he had a gift for hermeneutics and exposition tell a gathering of saints that this was the great sword of religion. I found out years later that the Greek says something else. You see, if was truly a sword, it would have used the Greek word rhompha, a sword used in battle. That isn’t the word. The word machaira is the chosen word here and is more of a dagger used by butchers to cut up meat. It is not a military weapon but something for use in bleeding and gutting. It was sometimes used in Pagan rituals for sacrificing the animal (sometimes human, like the rite of Saturnalia) for their purpose. It is an up-close and personal weapon, not one of military exercise. It is more like the great dagger of (false) religion. So the brother wasn’t necessarily wrong, but his imagery could have benefitted from the actual imagery John was using in the Greek.

Over the years I have been a believer, my understanding of things has evolved with education and experience. There are some principles here that are useful, so I will state a couple of them. First, when you are trying to evaluate a contested position (and this isn’t just biblical positions though it is the application here), look at what opponents of that position attack. It is almost uniquely the premillennial position, particularly if you mention the “rapture.” In fact, they claim that the word rapture never occurs in Scripture. They are wrong, the Greek word harpazo occurs 13 times just in the New Testament, and more times than I cared to count in the Old, (the Hebrew equivalent laqach used of Enoch when God took him in Gen 5:24). Yes, I am aware that it doesn’t always mean the same thing from the context, that’s why I introduced Enoch, which is the exact context. Not all uses of the word harpazo in the New Testament mean “rapture” in this sense. I count at least five in the New Testament that do, though I’ll let you look them up for your own edification and learning. That’s just an example of the kind of attacks the subject receives, and I won’t get into the attempts to mask the event from the public when it finally occurs. Hint to you, it involves “aliens.”

The Rider on the Red Horse is literally a being charged with destroying peace in any form. It represents a certain justice to men who ignore the truth of who men really are, sinners against a holy and just God. In Acts 17, Paul tells the assembled crown in the Acropolis on Mars’ Hill that all people everywhere have been ordered to repent of their sins and live for Him now because of the penalty that Christ paid on behalf of those who would turn to Him. Even there, not everyone heard Paul, and if you have ever had occasion to preach the gospel to anyone, you know that not everyone will listen to you either. Not all people will be saved, because some will rather do it themselves, believing in themselves or their false god to do the necessary work to help them “transcend to the next level.” Some of these now are becoming emboldened against followers of Christ, labelling us as terrorists to be imprisoned and even executed for our unacceptable thoughts on topics. Like the sanctity of life. Like the preservation of the rights of people to do as they please. The right of people to make their own choices after hearing all the evidence. I could go on, but I believe I have sufficiently made the point! They wanted to suppress the truth in unrighteousness that all people are sinners. God let them. Now this rider is going to irresistibly call out the violence that they will no longer be able to hide or deny and it will express itself in violence against their fellow human beings in pride and arrogance for the pride and arrogance with which they held their view of God, His Son the Christ, and His people. He will visit upon them their own fruit of their own deeds, and it will be very, very ugly. We will run into this again in the bowl judgments because it is a central theme of the wrath of God to encourage the unrepentant to turn, and when they finally decide they will not turn, then God Himself will unleash His full wrath on them. Later in the book, we will read this about the third bowl judgment: “Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of waters; and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying, ‘Righteous are You, who are and who were, O Holy One, because You judged these things; for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. They deserve it.’ And I heard the altar saying, ‘Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.’” Even the altar in Heaven agrees with it. I’ll stop here because I don’t want to belabour the point.

That is what I saw in the text this evening. If you weren’t persuaded by the actual Antichrist riding forth to bring all the world into subjection, then maybe you will be by the rider who brings violence out of every human on the planet. For those that survive, worse things are coming. Next time, we will look at the Third Seal and the rider it unleashes. It has a few twists I did not see coming at first, so I’m looking forward to presenting you the truth about the third rider. And yes, it is related to, some would argue a result of, the second rider.