During the last few weeks, we have been studying the Book of Revelation according to John.
Are you ready to hear the Book of Revelation according to Adam?
Oh yes. Let’s go!
I was taken up into a throne room where a great multitude of creatures, so many that you could never count, gathered in front of a tall steel door that was hundreds of feet high. The door was sealed, sealed shut so that no one could open it. Inside of the door was a large room that held the secret.
The creatures waited in silence as they hoped for someone worthy enough to open the sealed door so that the secret could be revealed.
Then I saw a creature point to the left as it yelled, “Look!”
The Judge
I turned my head and saw a judge dressed in a long black robe. She stood hundreds of feet tall, as tall as the steel door. The creatures parted to make a pathway as she confidently walked towards the door, carrying her 50-foot-tall gavel. She raised her gavel in the air then yelled the roar of 100,000 lions as she slammed the gavel against the steel door. After she struck the door, the judge stepped aside. We all held our collective breath to see if the seal would be broken.
A crack in the seal began to slowly emerge and work its way down the door. A loud silence filled the room as the creatures all stared, waiting for the seal to break and the door to open. It seemed like waiting a thousand years, but soon, the door slowly crept open until we could see inside.
The judge yelled into the room, “Come!”
And out of the room, I saw a hoard of angry, giant wasps. Each wasp was three feet long and one foot tall. They buzzed like the sound of five thousand oceans. They had teeth the size of bricks that looked like razor blades. They buzzed with anger, but they had no direction until their lord came.
The judge yelled, “Come!” a second time into the room. Out came a little blue bird that twittered about. It had a scroll in its beak to deliver a message to the wasps when the appointed time came.
The judge yelled a third time, “Come!” and from the room came a goat that had the whitest head you have ever seen. It was gleaming white and not a hair on its head was out of place. The goat came out to make its own judgment. And as the goat waited to make his judgment, a single black fly landed on his gleaming white hair.
The judge yelled a final time, “Come!” And out of the room came a massive orange elephant that had a perpetual frown. He was the lord of the wasps. The wasps surrounded the orange elephant in worship and adoration. Previously, the wasps had made a gold statue of the elephant to worship him, but now they worshiped the elephant in person.
The goat with the gleaming white hair didn’t notice the black fly on his head, so the goat and the fly walked to the massive orange elephant to tell him that the elephant had been defeated by a one hundred and fifty-year-old blue donkey.
The orange elephant was infuriated at the news and demanded that the goat lie and cheat so that the orange elephant would defeat the one hundred and fifty year old donkey by any means necessary. But the goat refused the elephant’s orders.
The goat quickly left the orange elephant. So the elephant was alone with his multitude of angry hornets, the orange elephant told the blue bird that it was now time to deliver the message. The bird tweeted to the hornets that the goat had betrayed them and their nation, but more importantly, the goat betrayed the elephant himself. The elephant told the hornets to chase after the goat, and as they hunted for the goat, I heard the hornets chant in one voice, “Hang the goat!”
The Symbolism
Alright. What am I talking about?
That’s right. This last week, US District Judge Tanya Chutkin unsealed the court document that detailed the case against one of our former presidents for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. Now if people 2,000 years from now were to find this story, do you think they would understand it? They might, but only because our abilities to communicate and record history are far different from the abilities of the first century. Even thought the events above happened 4-8 years ago, did you get all of the references?
But one of the things I want you to notice about this story is that it is a creative retelling of events that have already occurred. It lays before us a story full of symbolism about the evils on the day of January 6th, 2021.
The Book of Revelation does the same kind of symbolic storytelling, including when it tells the story of the Four Horsemen.
They are traditionally called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but the Bible never gives them that title. I think a better title would be The Four Horsemen of the Evil Empire.
That’s because just like the hornets, the bluebird, the white-headed goat, the orange elephant, the one hundred and fifty-year-old donkey, the golden statue, and even the black flly each represent political events and people from the recent history of the United States, so each of the four horsemen represents political events and people from the first century Roman Empire.
Okay, I need to take you back to your high school history class for a minute, but stick with me here.
A Brief History Lesson
The book of Revelation was written around the year 95 CE. In the year 70 CE, the Roman Empire conquered and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. The Romans laid siege to Jerusalem for about four months. That means the Roman army surrounded the city and made sure no one could enter the city and no one could leave. This starved the people of Jerusalem with famine. When no one can enter or leave, pestilence and diseases begin to spread. Peace is taken away from the city and in this crisis, people begin to kill one another out of desperation and the need for food. The economy of Jerusalem would have been destroyed, as the rich desperately tried to hold onto their wealth and goods and the poor desperately fought for food to eat. This situation brought death and a sense of hell to the people of Jerusalem.
After laying siege to the city, the Romans entered Jerusalem, killed many of the people and destroyed the Holy Temple. This event was the end of the world for the first-century Jewish people. It was cataclysmic. It was like parts of the earth had been destroyed, the stars had fallen, and death was spreading throughout the world. It was indeed the end of the world as they knew it.
The Four Horsemen
So when we read of the Four Horsemen, we should understand them as symbolic of events of the destruction of Jerusalem that have already taken place. Here is my evidence:
Let me ask you a question. What was the main transportation for the Emperor and the generals of the Roman army? Horses. In fact, by the year 95 CE when Revelation was written, a third of the Roman army rode horses. Horses were like the tanks of the ancient world. They were a sign of power and conquest.
The first horseman rode a white horse. According to Revelation, he was given a crown and he came to conquer. Interestingly, Roman Emperors did not typically ride white horses, but we know that the Emperor during the time Revelation was written, a man named Domitian, wanted to ride a white horse when he went conquering. Domitian was one of the most corrupt emperors. He accused his enemies of treason and executed or banished anyone who would even mildly criticize him. Stop me if this kind of corruption sounds familiar…
Domitian ruled with the sword, using extreme brutality as he conquered other peoples. In my view, the first horseman is clearly Emperor Domitian, the emperor during the time Revelation was written.
The three horsemen that followed the first horseman are symbolic of the Roman Empire’s military rule. The second horseman was bright red. He was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would kill one another. That’s exactly what happened when the Roman military laid siege to Jerusalem. People starved to death and killed one another in a state of crisis. The third horse represents the destruction of Jerusalem’s economy, where food the common folk could purchase, like wheat and barley, rose up in price so that poor people couldn’t eat, but rich folk could continue to hoard their expensive foods like olive oil and wine. The fourth horse brought famine and pestilence and death, which is exactly what Rome brought to Jerusalem and other ancient cities.
Breaking the Seal
Now here is a question with an obvious answer. Did Judge Chutkin cause the events of January 6th when she unsealed the court document and opened it up for us all to read?
No. Of course not. She simply unsealed and thus revealed the lies and manipulations that led to January 6th.
When the Lamb in Revelation opens up the seals of the scroll and the four horsemen come out, did the Lamb cause those events to happen?
No. Like Judge Chutkin opened the seal so that we could have the dangerous and destructive events of January 6th laid bare, the Lamb of Revelation opened the scroll so that we could see the dangerous and destructive events of the year 70 exposed for us all to see.
Because the only way that you can truly deal with the evil within ourselves and within the world is by having all of its ugly truth fully exposed. Only then can we fully heal from the evil humans impose on one another and change our ways.
Now the events of Revelation took place 2,000 years ago, but that’s not to say that Revelation is irrelevant for us today. I think Revelation is more relevant now than ever.
The Four Horsemen of Today
We might ask, “Where do we see the Four Horsemen today?” Is it in the American Empire? You may have heard that the US spends the most out of any country on our military. In fact, the US outspends the next nine countries combined. Just like the Roman Empire believed that peace comes through violence and the threat of violence, so does the United States.
But in addition, the United States upholds dictatorships and oppressive regimes throughout the world. Freedom House is an organization that studies governments that oppress their own people. In a list of 50 oppressive nations that include Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, and other oppressive governments, the US supplies weapons to 41 of 50 oppressive countries. The US also provides military training to 44 out of 50 of these countries, including to Iran, who many claim is one of the US’s greatest enemies.
Why does the US continue to support undemocratic and oppressive regimes with military aid and training? Because we aren’t really interested in spreading democracy. The stated interest in supporting oppressive regimes is that they provide stability in dangerous parts of the world, but the benefits to the United States Government are power and economic exploitation of resources in other countries.
But maybe even more to the point of the Book of Revelation is that the Roman Empire believed that the way to peace and stability was through violence and military conquest. The United States believes this, too. We have our own four horsemen, and they bring with them violence, conquest, pestilence, and death to people already suffering from oppressive regimes throughout the world. Tragically, tomorrow is October 7 and will mark one year from Hamas’ brutal attack on Israeli civilians. And it will also mark the beginning of the Israeli government’s response of genocidal terror against the Palestinian people, a genocide that is helped through funding by the US. We know this because Israeli government officials refuse to make a distinction between Hamas and Palestinians. All Palestinians are Hamas, according to Israel’s government. But humans don’t have to be this way.
More Revelations
Not only does the Book of Revelation reveal the evils of human violence and oppression, it also reveals God’s realm of radical inclusion.
In chapter 7 of Revelation, after John saw the four horsemen, he had a different vision in God’s throne room where he “looked, and there [he saw] 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. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
This is the great contrast that the Book of Revelation is trying to make between human empires and the realm of God. Keeping with the symbols within the book of Revelation, Empires are led by the four horsemen, who come to conquer, kill, and spread disease and economic exploitation. But in the Realm of God, there is a great multitude of people that no one could count. They are from every nation and every tribe and every language. They all lived in peace and prosperity before the throne of the lamb.
This is one of the things that I love about the Book of Revelation. It is wild and violent and difficult to understand. But it reveals the human predicament – we can easily fall into political systems of exclusion, violence, and oppression. But God is calling us to another way. Not the way of the Roman Emperor, which is more violence and conquest. Rather, God is calling us to the way of the Lamb – the way of nonviolence, love, forgiveness, and radical inclusion of people from every nation, from all tribes and languages and religions and races and socioeconomic backgrounds and gender identities and sexualities. Revelation gives us a vision that isn’t ultimately about exclusion but about the inclusion of more people than you could ever count. That is the good news.
May we trust in this good news. May we believe in it. And may we participate in it now and forevermore. Amen.
