Visions of Judgment: The Red Horse of War
Worried eyes are fixed upon the Middle East where yet another war seems imminent. What unknown forces will be unleashed should America, Britain and their allies invade Iraq? The horses are saddled and prepared. Will this be the war symbolized by the ominous red horse of Revelation 6 ?
by Darris McNeely
In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan once openly mused about the potential for an age-ending world war. "You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if—if we're the generation that's going to see that come about... There have been times in the past when we thought the world was coming to an end, but never anything like this."
Those who lived through World War I felt the same way. They called it the "Great War" and "the war to end all wars." Oh that it were true. The war to end all wars is coming, but it will follow a time of total war unlike any ever seen (Matthew 24:21). The ride of the second horseman of Revelation 6 unleashes the malignant forces of evil and removes the last vestiges of peace from the earth. However, Jesus Christ stops this horseman's ride with His appearance and the establishment of His just Kingdom.
Notice what John saw with the breaking of the second seal. "When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, 'Come and see.' Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword" (Revelation 6:3-4).
This vision corresponds with Christ's Olivet prophecy in Matthew. Notice, "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom" (Matthew 24:6-7).
The record of history shows a pattern of the red horse of war often following the white horse of false religion. An example is the Thirty Years War in Europe during the mid-17th century. Following the Protestant Reformation, the resultant shift in power among European states led to 30 years of carnage from 1618 to 1648. Religion, the newly emerged Protestant versus Roman Catholic theology, was the ideology that fueled the winds of war. It led to strange alliances: Catholic France aligned with Protestant Holland to offset the powerful Catholic Hapsburg dynasty. This resulted in prolonging the conflict. By the time peace (a euphemism for balance of power) was restored in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia, 8 million people had lost their lives.
What can we expect to see as this red horse of war rides across the landscape in the last days, unleashing the fury of nations and its unique ideology upon the world? A look at the history of war and its cause will give us a clue. Let's first look at what the Bible says is the cause of war.
The cause of war
Volumes have been written describing the root causes of war. It has been studied, no doubt, since the first conflict erupted among humans. The ancient Greeks felt human behavior was guided by fear, self-interest and honor. These characteristics cause war and instability. When instinctual human nature creates a crisis, the normal course of events leads to a breakdown in order, and anarchy or war is the result.
Relations among nations are generally guided by self-interest. When individual interest is jeopardized, the natural instinct for self-preservation takes over. War is often the result.
The apostle James wrote quite pointedly on this subject. "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask" (James 4:1-2).
James identifies lust, desire and covetousness as the sources of strife among people who cannot focus on the right relationship with God. He goes on to say, "Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (verse 4). Again we see that self-interest plays a dominant role in human aggression.
Left to itself, without a spiritual relationship with God, the human heart is the seat of conflict. In the context of the sins of Judah, Jeremiah the prophet said, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9.) Jesus Christ confirms, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matthew 15:19).
But the Bible reveals that the real source of this hostile nature is Satan the devil. In a heated discussion with the Pharisees who were challenging Him, Christ labeled Satan as the source of human hostility. "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44).
Paul describes Satan as controlling the "power of the air," literally swaying man to disobedience, without people's conscious awareness. Until man's nature undergoes a fundamental change, he follows after the natural "lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind." He is a child "of wrath" caught up with the rest of humanity in a spirit of conflict (Ephesians 2:2-3).
It will take a change of heart along with the addition of God's Spirit to turn the human mind from pursuing pure self-interest to following the lead of God. We find this solution alluded to in a quote from Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, "Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then there will be no more war!"
When the world comes under the covenant in which God writes His law upon the human heart with His Spirit, we will see the end of war. Until then, we will see wars continue and escalate in ferocity. Those who understand man's nature know he is on a course toward absolute destruction.
The beginning of war
In Genesis chapter 4, we read of the first human "war," the conflict between Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam. When God refused to accept the offering of Cain, reading his sinful heart, Cain's self-interest was threatened. He did not control his aggression and subsequently "rose up against Abel his brother and killed him" (Genesis 4:8).
Cain was expelled from the family environs and we are told he went to the land of Nod on the east of Eden (verse 16). Some biblical scholars say he built on the ancient site of Jericho. Regardless of the accuracy of those speculations, excavations at this site, one of the oldest inhabited sites on earth, reveal a fortress city with walls 12 feet high and 6 1/2 feet thick. The remains of a large tower, 30 feet across at the base and 30 feet high, tell a story of people living in a fortress city, protecting what they had, probably food, from those who would take it by force. Clearly, this was a site of conflict long before Joshua and the Israelites encircled its walls.
In Genesis 10, God provides a narrative of the sons of Noah and the cities that grew from their dynasties. One descendant, Nimrod, and the city he built, Babel, are inserted into the story. Nimrod was a "mighty hunter before the Lord." The wording indicates an adversarial relationship with God's purpose and plan. This is made clearer in the story of the Tower of Babel in chapter 11. The cities associated with Nimrod war back and forth for centuries. Babylon becomes a city, then an empire and eventually a symbol of a system that opposes God, His people and His plan throughout the Bible story.
It is that city, described in Revelation 17:5 as a "mystery...the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth," which in the time of the end provides the cultural and religious inspiration to a political-religious empire called "the beast." The roots of this end-time system reach back to the system started by Nimrod at Babel, thus bridging the intervening centuries. It will form the backdrop for the final conflict of the age brought on by the red horse of war.
No war has brought peace. Wars waged in the name of religion have not achieved religious harmony. No war waged for national interest has brought lasting security for any city, state or empire. The peace sought by man is all too often a peace that suits his nationalistic interests.
Current Iraqi conflict
As a result of the breakup of the Soviet empire in the early 1990s, its nuclear stockpiles and those of the United States have been dramatically reduced. However, the nuclear genie has not been put back into its bottle. Through various means the nuclear technology has migrated to other nations. Today India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, and twice in recent years have rattled their sabers to threaten a holocaust on the Asian subcontinent.
President Bush has identified three nations, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, as an "axis of evil." North Korea, openly admitting its capability, recently threatened to resume production of nuclear material. Satellite photographs have been taken which show facilities capable of making nuclear bombs under construction in Iran. The same types of facilities have been destroyed in Iraq by both the Israelis and the United States. It is the suspicion of more capability to produce weapons of mass destruction that is driving the Bush administration to lead an impending attack on Iraq.
Present world scene ready for war
The great fear is that nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, would fall into the hands of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and be used against Western nations. Some intelligence sources claim that Iraq already officially supports al Qaeda. This real possibility causes the unthinkable to come too close to reality. The end of the Cold War did not bring us any closer to the end of possible nuclear war. It just shifted the power into the hands of more players.
Those who study war understand the persistent danger. In a comprehensive look at the subject, author Gwynne Dyer made this chilling, sober and almost hopeless observation:
"To begin quite close to the end: we may inhabit the Indian summer of human history, with nothing to look forward to but the 'nuclear winter' that closes the account. The war for which the great powers hold themselves in readiness every day may come, as hundreds of others have in the past. The megatons will fall, the dust will rise, the sun's light will fail, and the race may perish. Nothing is inevitable until it has actually happened, but the final war is undeniably a possibility, and there is one statistical certainty. Any event that has a definite probability, however small, that does not decrease with time will eventually occur—next year, next decade, next century, but it will come. Including nuclear war" (War, 1985, p. xi).
One world government
This bleak prospect has led many to conclude that a supranational world government is the only hope for universal peace. The medieval writer Dante in his work De Monarchia speaks of the inevitable contentions between two governments which require arbitration by a third power with the authority to settle the dispute. "This third power is either the world-government, or it is not. So, we must arrive at a first and supreme judge for whom all contentions are judicable... Therefore, world-government is necessary for the world" (The Great Ideas: War and Peace, p. 1,018).
War at the end of the age will bring the nations to the point where one system will be created with the desire to bring peace to the earth. Revelation 13 describes a system rising up out of the sea, a large diverse system that is called "the beast." By a series of miracles, a world in crisis is persuaded to worship this system. Nations surrender their sovereignty and the world worships "the beast," asking "who is able to make war with (the beast)?" (verse 4). To enforce this type of "peace," he makes war on the people of God and he has authority over all "tribes and nations"—a worldwide power (verse 7).
Revelation 17 describes this "beast" receiving power from 10 kings. Again, the "peace" that is brought leads to war against God. The beast and his system will make war with the Lamb (Jesus Christ), but in the end will be overcome by Him.
Throughout the ages man has sought to organize a universal state. What began at Babylon as an attempt to reach to the heavens and defy God will be resurrected in an age-ending attempt to unify the nations into a political and economic system. The intended goal of this system will be to bring order and peace among the warring factions of humanity. But once "peace" is attained, the attractive mask will be removed to reveal a hideous beast of a system that will tear and destroy any opposition to its rule and authority. The desire of the ages—peace—will prove elusive one more time, when left in the hands of man.
The stage will be set for the climactic battle at the end.
Christ's intervention
Peace, when left to humans, has little chance of permanence. This system of Babylon that arises will be part of a time of world calamity unlike any experienced in history. The prophet Daniel was shown, "There shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation" (Daniel 12:1). Christ spoke of this time as well. "For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved..." He offered the light at the end of the tunnel when He added, "but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened" (Matthew 24:21-22).
This final time of war will be in the hands of God. Remember that Revelation 5 shows us that it is the Lamb who unleashes the seals. Christ is in charge of history, and He will bring this trial to a conclusion, resulting in peace for all peoples. But genuine peace will not come without a terrible cost in human suffering.
The final war to be waged will be of God's design. It will serve to humble mankind to the point that people will obey God and become willing to live the way that will produce peace.
Look at the description of this time of world conflict. Revelation 8 begins with the opening of the seventh seal, containing seven trumpet plagues of unimaginable destruction upon the earth. The next chapter reports that the sixth trumpet sounds: "Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, 'Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.' So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million" (Revelation 9:13-16).
This 200-million-person army is fearsome to contemplate. But what is important to understand in this verse is God's control over the armies and the destruction marching across the face of the earth. One unmistakable message of the book of Revelation is God's control of seemingly uncontrollable events.
Verse 18 shows a third of mankind, more than 2 billion lives, snuffed out by three plagues. The only hope of human survival is the reality of Christ's intervention to prevent the destruction of the earth and its inhabitants.
As the "crisis at the close" reaches its crescendo, the heavens will open and Christ will appear on a white horse. Here, in God's message of hope, appears a fifth horseman whose ride will be decisive and final. Revelation 19:11 says He is "called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war."
Christ will wage this battle in righteousness because He alone holds the keys to death and the grave (Revelation 1:18). No other person waging battle or war in history, no matter how "just" the cause may seem, can make this claim. God's judgment upon the nations has been building over the millennia and will be executed at precisely the right time.
This ultimate battle will result in the advent of the Kingdom of God. Finally there will be lasting peace.
But before or war in history, no matter how "just" the cause may seem, can make this ook at the ride of the third horse, famine. —WNP
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