I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Revelation 4-8.

One thing I meant to mention yesterday that I think is important to understand about what I believe about the Book of Revelation: I believe that the Book of Revelation describes a vision which John actually had.  However, John made editorial decisions about what words to use to describe that vision,  what things he chose to quote and what things he paraphrased.  Which brings us to the resemblance between John’s vision and some of Ezekiel’s visions.  Comparing and contrasting John’s and Ezekiel’s visions can give us insight into their meaning.  John saw the four living beings differently than Ezekiel did because the message he was being given in his vision was different.  In Ezekiel’s vision each of the beings had the face of a lion, an ox, a human, and an eagle.  In John’s vision, each being had a different face, one that of a lion, one that of an ox, one that of a human, and one that of an ox.  There is meaning in why those faces are present in both visions, but I have yet to see an explanation which causes me to care. 

I realized the other year that the popular understanding of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is based on a merger between what John writes here and elements from Ezekiel.  The common understanding is that the Four Horsemen were summoned one at a time and then rode out together.  In fact, John describes them as each being summoned, one at a time, and riding out immediately by themselves.   The Four Horsemen do not ride together, they follow one after the other.  I am not fully sure of how to interpret this, but the third and fourth Horsemen represent things which follow after the second.  The second Horseman brings war and violence, the complete breakdown of order, throughout the earth.  Famine, the third Horseman, follows such an outbreak of violence.  And death and disease follow closely behind that.  I am unsure of the connection between the first Horseman, the Conqueror, and the other three.  The second through fourth Horsemen represent something we see again and again throughout history.  Part of me thinks that the Four Horsemen described here represent a repeating pattern in history.  Another part of me thinks that the first Horseman represents a conqueror whose conquest will mark the beginning of the End Times