A Pale Green Rider – the 4th Horseman of Revelation

Check out this eerie video on YouTube.  It is news footage from the riots in Egypt during the Arab Spring last year.  The end of the video shows a strange green figure that appears to be a ghost of a man riding a horse.  The rider trots threw the mob and disappears off the screen right before a massive explosion occurs.  Scary, right?

The video implies that this pale green rider is none other than the forth horsemen the Book of Revelation.

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him; they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth. (Revelation 6:8 NRS)

We are currently exploring the Book of Revelation in our Lutherans and Lattes group.  When we began our study, one of the first things we decided together was that prophecy in the Old and New Testament did not function as “future written in advance,” as much as it functions as description of the writers present (and broken) realities and a call to turn back to God.  The Book of Revelation (btw – Revelation comes from the Greek word “apocalypsis” which means “revealing” – it does not mean earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear war) was a letter written to 7 churches in present-day Turkey by a man named John who was in exile on an island off the coast.  His letter has three functions:

1. A call to the churches that were experiencing heavy persecution, even death, to remain strong and endure in faith.

2. A call to the churches that had become complacent or had assimilated too much to the surrounding culture to turn back towards God

3. Ultimately, a message of hope – that God has the final victory despite the current struggles, which included Roman occupation and persecution on a number of levels.

John, like many writers before him (including Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and others) uses picture language or symbolic language to convey his message.  Four of those pictures are of horsemen.  The first is a white horse and a rider who carries a bow: “he came out conquering and to conquer” – representing outside threats to the community’s security.  The second horse is red, and the rider carries a sword: “its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another” – representing discord and threats from within the community.  The third horse is black, and the rider carries a pair of scales: “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay, but do not damage the olive oil and the wine!” – representing economic insecurity and inequality.   Finally, the fourth horse is pale green and its rider is Death: “they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth” – any Christian in the Roman empire would know about those wild animals (think of the Coliseum and how many martyrs were made by the lions!).  These pictures were not predictions of the future – they were descriptions of the church’s current reality.

I don’t need some super-imposed green blob on a YouTube video to prove to me that the pale green horseman is here.  I see this pale green rider all the time – I’m sure you do too.  We see the rider at the bedside of our loved one as they lay dying from the pestilence that is cancer, or in the incinerators of Dachau, or on the footage of last year’s tsunami in Japan, or in the pictures of starved children, women and men of Somalia, and certainly in the news and images that continue to poor out of Arab nations like Egypt and Syria.  The reality is that the four horsemen have always been here.  What we really need is an other-reality, and that is what the Book of Revelation provides.

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” ¹¹ And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7:9-12)

Our ultimate future is worship – all creatures, all nations, all peoples – worship of God and lamb.  It is a future where, “[t]hey will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; ¹⁷ for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17)