Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #4 of Revelation, chapter 6, and we are going to be reading Revelation 6:8:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Now as we were discussing this in our last study, we saw that the pale horse is actually the color green; it identifies with green grass and green grass identifies with believers, as they identify with the Word of God.
So we are very interested in this rider that rides on the green horse because the Bible says, “his name that sat on him was Death.” This Scripture sounds horrific – Death riding a horse with Hell following. What could God possibly have in view here? So, we are curious and we are very interested in finding out what the Lord is talking about.
We understood what He was saying about the rider on the white horse being the Lord Jesus going forth with His Gospel, “conquering and to conquer;” and the rider on the red horse was Satan doing battle with Christ; and the rider on the black horse had to do with the time of the Great Tribulation when there was a “spiritual famine” within the congregations and, yet, God commands to “hurt not” His elect, to “hurt not the oil and the wine.”
But what about the green horse, the pale horse? What could be in view with this rider who is seated on him? To “sit,” in the Bible, means to rule and he is seated on the green horse, and his name is “Death, and Hell followed with him.” We see that Death and Hell are connected in this verse and that is significant. Death and Hell are not mentioned all that many times together, but they are in a few places and one place we want to turn is Revelation, where the Lord Jesus is speaking in Revelation 1:18:
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Christ has the keys of “hell and of death” and we saw the Lord use these keys, for instance, in Revelation 20:1:
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him…
Here, this is language describing the judgment of God upon Satan at the cross when the Lord bound the “strong man,” the Bible tells us, and He “cast him into the bottomless pit.” Now, of course, there is no actual “bottomless pit.” It is figurative language that God is using to describe
the condition Satan came under – of hell – which identified completely with death. And, also, it kept him in restraints during the period of his binding, the thousand years, which is another figure to represent the entire New Testament church age, which turned out to be 1,955 years. But we see the angel, or messenger, come down from heaven having the key and that is referring to Christ who is the Messenger of the Covenant, the Bible tells us.
We also find another angel in view in Revelation 9:1:
And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
Now, once again, this angel and the star are representing the Lord Jesus Christ. He possesses the keys of “hell and death,” and that is what this key is going to unlock, as we read in Revelation 9:2-3:
And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
These verses are describing Judgment Day, May 21, 2011, when God brought judgment on the world. What did He do? He opened up the bottomless pit; He opened up hell and the smoke, which indicates the wrath of God, “as the smoke of a great furnace,” came out of the pit. And where did the smoke go? The smoke came upon the earth “and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.” So the condition of the bottomless pit was one of smoke, as a result of a great furnace, and you can visualize this – that traditional view of hell as a burning place – and that is exactly the image God is utilizing here.
And, yet, the significant thing for us to see is that the condition of the bottomless pit is brought up to earth; that is, the smoke rises and it comes out of the pit and it begins to darken the sun and darken the air “by reason of the smoke of the pit.” This makes the condition of earth the same as the condition of the bottomless pit. To put it another way, God brought the condition of hell to the world when He began Judgment Day on May 21, 2011.
We do not read, here, of Satan ascending out of the pit – it has nothing to do with that; that happened at the beginning of the Great Tribulation when he was “loosed for a little season.” But the opening of the pit in Revelation 9 identifies with the transition of judgment from the churches (as their judgment was described in the previous chapter of Revelation, chapter 8) and now the final three “woes” deal with the nations of the world, with the inhabitants of the earth and with the worldwide judgment of all unsaved individuals; God is bringing them into the condition of hell. Hell is brought to the earth and, so, it is likened, in our verse in Revelation 6, as though Death was riding a horse and Hell followed with him.
We read in Revelation, chapter 18, which is describing the fall of Babylon (and remember that Babylon fell after the seventy year period and that seventy year period typified the Great Tribulation) and, therefore, we can understand Babylon’s fall, historically, to represent the judgment of the world which occurred after the twenty three years of Great Tribulation which ended on May 21, 2011.
And God explains in Revelation 18:8:
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
Notice how death comes “in one day.” Death has now taken over; death is reigning supreme over the earth. And, of course, the picture in our verse is that Death is riding a horse because a horse is an animal that represents strength and Death is ruling with power and Hell is following with him in these dark days – in this spiritual night that we have entered into when “no man can work,” the Bible says – and Death and Hell are the prevailing character of the time. If we had to choose some things to represent these days of judgment, it would be Death and Hell.
Well, in order for us to better understand the mysterious rider on the green horse whose name is Death, let us go back to the beginning in Genesis, chapter 2, and learn a little bit more about death. That is how we will get a little bit better understanding of the one whose name is Death.
God says in Genesis 2:16:
And JEHOVAH God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
We see right from the beginning that God established Law. The Law of God was given. It was not a big Law Book. And, by the way, the Bible is a Law Book; it is full of the commandments of God. You really cannot separate the Laws of God from the Bible. The entire Word of God, the Bible, is really a Law Book and, yet, God did not give Adam and Eve the Bible all at once. He did not even give them the Ten Commandments. He just gave them one very simple and direct Law, very plain for them to understand: there is a tree in the garden and you shall not eat of it. In the day you eat of it, you will die.
Now up until this point, death was foreign to this beautiful and wonderful and good creation. Nothing died. Man did not die. The animals did not die. Nothing died that God had created. Death was unknown, but here it is stipulated as the consequence – as the punishment – for disobedience. And, of course, we know it was not long before Adam and Eve disobeyed God and, as a result, mankind died in their soul existence; Adam and Eve died in their souls and every child born from them (and we have all come from the loins of Adam and Eve), likewise, has been born dead in sin and are “dead in trespasses and sins,” as a result of transgressing and breaking the Law of God. God commanded, “Thou shalt not eat of the tree,” and man ate of the tree.
Now we read in the New Testament, in Romans 5:12-14:
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
In these verses, as well as many other places, God is describing how death came into the world. Let me read it again:
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men…
Death comes as a result of sin and “death reigned from Adam to Moses.” Why does God say that? Well, when Moses was born and when God had communication with him, He gave him further commandments – further Laws of God. He gave Moses the first five Books of the Bible and Moses began to write down the written Word of God, to record the Laws of God and, so, many more Laws are given and that creates opportunity for much more sin. And, yet, from the point of Adam until the point of Moses when the Law of God was expanded and recorded in written form, death still reigned during that time because men were still sinners.
Let us also go to Romans, chapter 7, and I am going to read a passage beginning in verse 5. And our focus is on learning about death – the Biblical definition and the Biblical understanding of death – and why it is that God is referring to Death as the rider on the pale horse in our verse in Revelation, chapter 6, so we want to get some background information on death. It says in Romans 7:5-13:
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
Now, here, we do gain some insight into the workings of the Law of God. First of all, there is nothing wrong with the Law of God. There is no injustice and there is nothing evil in the Law that brought about sin and death. It is sin “taking occasion by the commandment,” but God makes a point of stressing that the commandment is “holy, and just, and good.” His Word is perfect and pure and right; there is no blemish; there is nothing wrong with the Bible; there is nothing wrong with the Word of God.
However, sin takes “occasion by the commandment” and, by it, slays man and, therefore, death enters in, as it says in verse 13: “Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” In other words, God is joining together His commandment with death. Death comes as a result of the breaking of the commandment of God. It came, historically, as a result of sin “taking occasion by the commandment” and, so, we cannot separate sin (which is the transgression of the Law of God and the Bible tells us: “the wages of sin is death”) and the commandment of God. Where the commandment is, there will be, as a result (since the fall), a failure on man’s part to uphold and maintain, with a perfect standard, that commandment and, so, he will fall and break the commandment; he will transgress the Law of God. As a result, the pronouncement of condemnation is made: “Thou shalt die.” (The wages of sin is death.)
We find in 2nd Corinthians 3:6-8:
Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
As far as what we are interested in right now is the statement in verse 6: “the letter killeth.” The letter refers to the written Word of God; the Word of God is the Bible. The Bible kills because the Bible is full of commandments; it is a Law Book. When the Bible goes forth – when the Law of God is declared or proclaimed or taught – in any way, it strikes the listener dead, with death, because it convinces and convicts the sinner of their sins and it finds that they are guilty and the punishment that the Bible immediately pronounces is death: “The wages of sin is death.” The Bible is a Book that brings death and it is one of the reasons that man so fears it and mankind wants to flee from it.
When the light of the Word of God penetrates into the darkness of the world and shows man his sin, he wants to run from the light because that light will reveal he is a sinner. And, if he is a sinner, then he is guilty of death and he is deserving of the wrath of God, to be destroyed for evermore. So he flees and tries to get away in whatever way he can. Some develop other religions to escape. Some pervert the right religion, the Christian religion, in order to escape. And some deny there is a God in order to escape. And some just try to avoid it physically, at all cost, in order to get away from the Law’s decree and from the condemnation and wrath that the Law pronounces upon them: you have broken the Law and you have broken the everlasting covenant. This is what God says in Isaiah, chapter 24, in a chapter describing Judgment Day. It says in Isaiah 24:5-6:
The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate:
That Hebrew word translated as desolate ought, actually, to have been translated as guilty. They are guilty and that is the Law’s decree to all men, unless they have a Saviour – unless someone has taken their sins upon Himself and made payment on their behalf and satisfied the Law’s perfect demand for justice; and only then can the Law of God, the Bible, pass by an individual and no longer condemn that person: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,” the Bible tells us. That individual is free from the penalty of the Law, free from the condemnation and wrath of God and, therefore, he is free to live for evermore.
Let us also look at 2nd Corinthians, chapter 2, and we will see how this Word of God, the commandment of God that identifies with death, relates to the true believers. It says in 2nd Corinthians 2:15-16:
For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?
Well, we can see why this is. We are “the sweet savour of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish,” because we closely relate to, and identify with, the Word of Christ, the Bible. As we shared this Word, if God had chosen a certain individual to salvation, and we brought the Word of God to them, it was as though they were receiving life because it was through that Word that God saved them.
But, on the other hand, if they were not one of God’s chosen people and their names were not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (recorded before the foundation of the world) and if they were not predestinated to salvation, then we became a “savour of death unto death,” because they were subject to perish; they were not elect of God.
But what happens at the time of the end, in this Day of Judgment, when God’s people continue to identify completely with, and relate to, the Word of Christ, the Bible, and, yet, God has finished His salvation program? He has saved the last of His elect to be saved. And now what, when God’s Word goes forth as God’s people seek to obey God and send His Word to His sheep? Well, when others hear it, there is no savour of life unto life possible any more. There is only death unto death. The believers now completely identify with the Law of God, the Bible, which only brings death in this Day of Judgment.