I
watched as the Lamb opened the first of
the seven seals. Then I heard one of the
four living creatures say in a voice
like thunder, "Come!" I looked, and
there before me was a white horse! Its
rider held a bow, and he was given a
crown, and he rode out as a conqueror
bent on conquest. (Revelation 6:1, 2)
For thirty years now,
there has been a highly popular job
hunting guide in print, updated yearly
by its author, Richard Nelson Bolles.
The author's formula for finding a
fulfilling career is built around two
fundamental questions: What do you want
to do? Where do you want to do it?
Having sold upwards of four million
copies, it has certainly helped at least
hundreds of thousands, and probably
millions of people find fulfilling
careers. The book's title: What Color
Is Your Parachute?
I don't expect this
sermon to have anywhere near the reach
or impact of that book. However, there
is a book that has had a far
deeper impact on not just millions, but
billions of people. That book, of
course, is the Bible--which we regard as
the Word of God. The Bible has outsold
all other books since it was first
printed in Germany around 1455 by a man
named Johannes Gutenberg with his brand
new high tech printing press that used
movable metal type. Ever since the Bible
completed the journey from hand-copied
scrolls to printed books, it has been
kept in print not merely three decades,
but nearly five and a half centuries.
And though my question for you today,
based on the book of Revelation, is not
nearly as catchy as the title of the
popular career guide, your answer will
affect not only your career here on
earth, but your eternal career.
The question is: What
color is your horse?
Our reading from
Revelation gives four choices: you can
have a white horse, a red horse, a black
horse, or a pale horse.
To understand the
symbolism of these horses, and what they
mean for us, let's look at the context.
First, these horses appear one by one as
the first four of seven seals are opened
up. Those seals are on a scroll held in
the hands of the Lord God, who sits on a
great throne in heaven.
Though we are used to
books with pages and bindings, in the
ancient world scrolls were a much more
common form for books. The sacred
scriptures of the ancient Jews were
written on scrolls. In their synagogues
from that time right up to the present
there is kept, with great veneration, a
scroll containing the Torah, or Law,
which consists of the first five books
of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
It's fairly obvious,
then, that the scroll held in the hand
of God is none other than the Word of
God. And as the seals on this scroll are
opened, out come four horses of four
different colors. So we can figure that
these horses have something to do with
God's Word, which we commonly call the
Bible.
However, we don't
have to guess at this connection. It is
made explicit later on in the book of
Revelation:
I saw heaven
standing open, and there before me was
a white horse, whose rider is called
Faithful and True. With justice he
judges and makes war. His eyes are
like blazing fire, and on his head are
many crowns. He has a name written on
him that no one knows but he himself.
He is dressed in a robe dipped in
blood, and his name is the Word of
God. The armies of heaven were
following him, riding on white horses
and dressed in fine linen, white and
clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp
sword with which to strike down the
nations. He will rule them with an
iron scepter. He treads the winepress
of the fury of the wrath of God
Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh
he has this name written: King of
kings and Lord of lords. (Revelation
19:11-16. Emphasis mine.)
Here we are told
plainly that the rider on the horse is
the Word of God. A literal translation
of a verse from the Psalms suggests that
the horse itself is also related to the
Word of God:
Gird your sword
upon your thigh, O mighty one, in your
glory and majesty. In your majesty
ride on victoriously upon the word of
truth and the meekness of
righteousness. (Psalm 45:3, 4)
Here the mighty one,
namely, the Lord, is riding "upon the
word of truth." And how could we picture
this other than as riding on a great and
powerful horse?
To be more specific,
Swedenborg interprets the image of the
horse in the Bible as symbolizing our
understanding of the Word of God. It
helps us to grasp this symbolism if we
remember that motorized vehicles did not
exist in Biblical time. Horses, and
horse-drawn chariots and wagons, were
the fastest and most sophisticated means
of travel. And how do we travel in our
minds and spirits? We travel in our
thoughts to various destinations. Even
while you are sitting right here in
church, I suspect some of your minds are
traveling to your mother's day dinners,
and beyond!
We ride upon our
horse of spiritual understanding
when we guide our thoughts to various
destinations based on our views of what
God is teaching us in the Bible. And
wherever our thoughts go, sooner or
later that is where our lives will go as
well. So it is fairly easy to see that a
horse, in the Bible, represents how we
view the Bible--how we understand the
Word of God.
With this in mind, I
ask again: What color is your horse? You
can have a white one, a red one, a black
one, or a pale one.
In our story from
Revelation, white is clearly the most
desirable color for your horse:
I watched as the
Lamb opened the first of the seven
seals. Then I heard one of the four
living creatures say in a voice like
thunder, "Come!" I looked, and there
before me was a white horse! Its rider
held a bow, and he was given a crown,
and he rode out as a conqueror bent on
conquest.
In compact language,
the white horse symbolizes "people who
are engaged in truth from goodness" (Apocalypse
Revealed #295, under "The Spiritual
Sense"). In other words, we are riding
on the white horse when we read the
Bible--God's Word--in order to
understand spiritual truth so that we
can use it in doing good other people
according to the Lord's commandment that
we should "love one another as he has
loved us" (John 13:34).
When we wish to
understand God's truth in order to
correct our own faults and live good
lives of love and service toward others,
then we metaphorically have a bow in our
hands, and are given a crown, and we
ride forth into life as a conqueror bent
on conquest. The bow in our hands is a
solid rationale for understanding and
using the teachings of the Bible. This
is important, because as Swedenborg says
in our reading from his little book on
The White Horse, if we are more
interested in our own righteousness and
glory than we are in being taught by the
Lord, we can draw all kinds of
contradictory meanings from the literal
meaning of the Bible, and support any
false dogma that happens to support our
own desires. Only with a true framework
for understanding can we gain genuine
truth from the Bible. And we develop
that true framework for understanding
when we go to the Bible not to support
our own pet theories and doctrines, but
to see what the Lord wants to teach us
that will help us be better, more
thoughtful, and more loving people.
When we do this, we
have a bow in our hands that is a
genuine understanding of the Bible's
teachings, which we can use to fight off
all sorts of false and damaging
attitudes and beliefs that would tear us
down and reduce us to mental and
emotional slavery to various addictive
habits and bad ways of living.
And further, we are
given a crown, the sign of royalty,
symbolizing the victories that we gain
over our faulty attitudes and wrong ways
of living when we go to God's Word in
order to learn and follow what God wants
to teach us. Spiritually, we "ride out
as a conqueror bent on conquest." Not
conquest and domination of others, but
conquest over our own inner enemies: the
enemies of false thinking and wrong
desires. That is the white horse.
Next comes the red
horse, which is described this way:
When the
Lamb opened the second seal, I heard
the second living creature say,
"Come!" Then another horse came out,
a fiery red one. Its rider was given
power to take peace from the earth
and to make people kill each other.
To him was given a large sword.
In a good sense,
fiery red is the color of love. But the
rider of this red horse takes
peace from the earth, and makes people
kill each other. So instead of
representing love, in this context red
symbolizes the fires of selfishness and
hatred that take away our peace, and
cause us to burn with jealousy and anger
toward others. We ride a red horse when
we go to the Bible, not to learn how to
love one another, but to support and
justify our own wrong desires so that we
can keep on living selfishly and
materialistically, pretending that it is
the will of God.
We can see this sort
of red horse in action when we read news
stories of corrupt priests and
televangelists who justify their highly
destructive behavior by claiming that
they are under the cover of God's grace
or of the sacraments of the church. And
we do it ourselves when we use our
religious knowledge, not to correct
ourselves, but to justify behavior that
we know is contrary to the will of God.
The black horse comes
next:
When the Lamb
opened the third seal, I heard the
third living creature say, "Come!" I
looked, and there before me was a
black horse! Its rider was holding a
pair of scales in his hand. Then I
heard what sounded like a voice among
the four living creatures, saying, "A
quart of wheat for a penny, and three
quarts of barley for a penny, and do
not damage the oil and the wine!"
Black is the color of
darkness. Though it can be useful in
providing contrast so that we see the
white of true understanding better, in
itself black is the absence of knowledge
and understanding. It is the darkness of
mind when we are plunged into ignorance
and false thinking. We ride the black
horse when we have no interest in
understanding spiritual truth, but would
prefer to argue based on materialistic
ideas and a superficial understanding of
the Bible. Notice that a voice is heard
bargaining about the price of
wheat and barley--just as we prefer to
debate and argue about the truth when we
have no interest in actually
following it.
Any parent has this
experience when their children do not
want to do what they are being asked to
do. Speaking for my own children, they
are masterful lawyers when it comes to
avoiding cleaning up their messes or
going to bed! We become masterful
religious lawyers, too, when we don't
want to hear and follow what God is
telling us to do. And then we are riding
on the black horse.
The pale horse is the
worst of all:
When the Lamb
opened the fourth seal, I heard the
voice of the fourth living creature
say, "Come!" I looked, and there
before me was a pale horse! Its rider
was named Death, and Hades was
following close behind him. They were
given power over a fourth of the earth
to kill by sword, famine and plague,
and by the wild beasts of the earth.
The red horse
symbolizes our understanding of the
Bible when we have no good in mind; the
black horse when we would rather argue
about the truth than follow it. The pale
horse is when both of these are together
in the worst way: it is when we desire
neither to do good nor to understand the
truth, but have wholly given ourselves
over to our own self-centered and
destructive ways. This is spiritual
death, and "Hades," or the underworld of
darkness, follows in our wake when we
are riding the horse of spiritual death.
When we are on this horse, we bring upon
ourselves the inner death of spiritual
famine and plague, letting our
destructive cravings run wild like "the
wild beasts of the earth."
The Lord sets before
us these four choices: the white horse
of reading God's Word from a desire for
love and goodness; the red horse of
reading it to justify wrong behavior;
the black horse of reading it in order
to debate and argue about the truth; and
the pale horse of abandoning ourselves
to selfish and materialistic living.
What color is your
horse?
Artwork:
Like the Wind © Inspired
Art by Danny Hahlbohm and is
used with permission. All rights
reserved by the artist.
Music:
Fragments of My Soul
© 2001 Bruce DeBoer
No Right Click and
Color Scroll Bar Scripts Courtesy of:
