The Four Horsemen Seem To Have Arrived — What To Do?

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. From left to right are Death, Famine, War, and Conquest; the Lamb is at the top.

The weaponization of God has its roots in the writings of biblical prophets dating back 2500 years or more.

The world has been ending since it began. That’s the impression I have after reading the biblical prophets and John of Patmos in his famous Book of Revelation, an apocalyptic narrative directed at persecuted Christians in the first century.

The weaponization of God in John’s Revelation gospel is a tradition born of the persecution, strife, imprisonment, and slavery that the Jewish people suffered, with little to fight back with but their writing. The prophets responded with apocalyptic visions and narratives.

Today Revelation is used by some to invoke fear and dread. This makes people more malleable, more easily convinced of the “salvation” offered by the writer, preacher or Youtuber. I looked up some of these videos and read the comments of terrified viewers.

I wanted to take a look at it.

What is the Book of Revelation?

The reference of “The Four Horsemen” is to the last book of the Bible, written by John of Patmos. John states his exile to Patmos, a small, isolated island in the Aegean Sea where Roman authorities sent him in a time of great Christian persecution. The Romans had autocratic rule and…