The scene opens with Him who is seated on the throne in heaven holding a scroll with seven seals in his right hand. An angel then proclaims in a mighty voice: "Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?" The apostle John weeps because no one comes forward - not in heaven, not on the earth, nor beneath it! He is then comforted by one of the elders - for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah has stepped forward to do just that (cf Revelation 5:1-5).

Yahshua (the Lamb that was slain for the sins of mankind - and therefore worthy to break open the scroll's seals) proceeds to start breaking the seals. The breaking of each seal is followed by apocalyptic events that have far-reaching consequences for the earth and its inhabitants. The subject of our article - the Four Horsemen - is part of these events and come forth during the breaking of the first four seals. What then, do these diversely coloured horses and their riders represent? What events characterize their going forth? 

Prophecy, of course, is sometimes layered so that a piece of prophecy has more than one interpretation and fulfilment. So we do not here insist that what this article lays down is the sole perspective on the subject.

Here then, are the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse. "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, he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest." (Revelation 6:1-2). Here revealed, is Yahshua Messiah's arch-enemy - the Papacy of Rome! His is such a clever disguise that many have been beguiled into believing that that horse's rider is Yahshua! We are here bade to beware the warnings issued in the scriptures about false Messiahs (cf Matthew 24:5; 2Thessalonians 2:8 -12, etc). According to Martin Luther: "...the Papacy is the true and real Antichrist." The rider is an uncanny imitation of the real Messiah. However, a comparison here would bring out the differences quite clearly: One, the horseman rides out of the seals of judgement that only Yahshua Hamashiakh could open (Revelation 6:1). This shows that the White Horseman cannot be our Messiah, since Yahshua, by comparison, rides out of heaven (Revelation 19:11). So the one, tolerates the misdeeds of the other (though only for some limited amount of time).

Indeed, how the horseman be Yahshua, when he emerges from a seal that Yahshua has broken?!

Two, the first horseman has no title of his own. As a matter of fact, popes relinquish their names of birth and adopt some new name upon assumption of the Papal Office. For example, the late Polish prelate, Pope John Paul II, ceded his childhood name - Carol Wojtyla upon ascending into the Papal Office, where he adopted the name - John Paul II. The same can be said for the equally late Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, who forsook his name of birth and became Pope Benedict XVI. On the other hand, the real Messiah is entitled King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16).

The counterfeit Messiah is also described as having "...a bow WITH NO ARROWS" (Revelation 6:2, NIV, capitals supplied). The pope always carries with him a BOWed crucifix and DOES NOT FIGHT HIS OWN WARS (thus a bow, MINUS ARROWS). Instead, his followers and the kings of the earth have always WAGED WAR ON HIS BEHALF. This has been Rome's modus operandi since the days of Pepin and Charlemagne. He has always used (or misused) monarchs, noblemen and knights to fight in his crusades and numerous other wars for example the St.Bartholomew massacre in Paris, the vicious break up of the former Yugoslavia (in the 1990s), and the horrendous altercation between North and South Vietnam (in the 1960s and early seventies). The Muslims too, along with European dictators such as Spain's Francisco Franco, Italy's Benito Mussolini and Germany's Adolf Hitler have similarly been used to advance Vatican interests. That is why she is depicted as a woman RIDING (read controlling) the Beast of Revelation 17. 

American leaders too have periodically done the pope's bidding: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in World War II, Lyndon B Johnson and  Richard M Nixon (in Vietnam), the Bushes (in Panama, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan), etc. Rome has always sought to embroil the American military in wars that have little to do with American interests but everything to do with the first horseman's agenda on earth. Yahshua, on the other hand, wields a powerful sword with which he wages war for his armies. In fact his army carries no weapons at all (cf Revelation 19:15).

We also note that  the first horseman has only one crown which is GIVEN TO HIM (Revelation 6:4-8). Indeed popes do not get their position by dint of bloodline, and neither do they pass their papal seat on to their progeny. No, they are "given" the papal crown after winning elections in which the college of cardinals votes in secret conclave. Afterwards, during a coronation ceremony, the following words, among others, are uttered: "... TAKE THOU THE TIARA ADORNED WITH THE TRIPLE CROWN, and know that thou art the father of princes and kings, and the governor of the world." (Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century, by Avro Manhattan, p. 76, full caps mine).

Yahshua, on the other hand has many crowns (Revelation 19:12). Thus the horseman of Revelation 6:2 and that of Revelation 19:11, are distinctly different.

The first horseman, as is clear by now, is the Papacy. No nation has ever been able to survive its wily machinations down through the corridors of history. He is a strange horseman because he employs religion as an effective tool through which to conquer the world. He is attired in white cassocks and looks quite peaceful. 

However, underneath this blameless "man of God" exterior, untrammelled lusts for power, wealth, recognition and control lurk. Through their crafty Jesuits, Rome was able to ensure that they were among the very first institutions to establish themselves (in the guise of missionary work) in the newly discovered lands of America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, during the Age of Discovery. This was the time in the 15th and 16th centuries when European powers went forth from Europe using explorers, geographical societies, navigators, chartered companies and sheer military force to conquer the entire world. Thus, this white horseman rode conquering throughout the earth. In fact, the Vatican believes that it is their divinely appointed mission to rule over all the world's sovereigns and their territories. If there be kings, princes, sultans, presidents, rajas, prime ministers and such like, these can only govern at the pleasure of the proud, triple-tiara crowned, white-frocked potentate at Vatican City!

When the second seal is opened, the apostle John heard the second living creature say, "Come!" Another horse then emerged - a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. He was given a large sword (Revelation 6:3-4). Among the very first people to settle in Spanish conquered South America were Jesuit missionaries led by Jose de Anchieta in the sixteenth century. Some settled deep in the jungles of Amazonia, among the Guarani Indians of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. They established an economic system called Reductions which brought the Jesuits no small profit. In the lopsided arrangement, the Guarani were housed in communal accommodations and were employed in various craft industries in almost slave labour conditions. A very tiny bit of the profit from their labour was used to clothe, house and maintain their upkeep. The humongous profits went to enrich the Jesuit Order and the Vatican. Ships laden with high-value merchandise would frequently sail down the Guarani River and into the Atlantic on their way to Europe where the said goods would be sold at astronomical profits. 

This trade was entirely in the hands of the Jesuits and excited no small amount of envy among European monarchs. The Reductions were therefore one of the reasons for the disbandment of the Jesuit Order in 1773. These Latin American reductions sowed the ideas behind that diabolical economic system called Communism which the Jesuits later perfected. It was the Jesuits via Fredrich Engels that gave the German philosopher Karl Heinrich Marx the ideas that he distilled into the ideological pamphlet he entitled The Communist Manifesto. Shortly after their dissolution in 1773, the Jesuits secretly sponsored Adam Weishaupt (a canon law professor at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Germany) to found a carbon copy organisation to their defunct Society of Jesus. This secret society was called the Illuminati (no doubt after Loyola's Allumbrados - meaning, "the enlightened ones"). Weishaupt launched his Order of the Illuminati on 1st May 1776. That is why First May is celebrated as Labour Day throughout the world today. It is also the reason why on May Day parades, the theme colour is red, as are the flags of Communist states. It is the Jesuit-inspired Illuminati that first tried the ideas of Communism in the French Revolution of 1789. The Bastille was stormed, the prisoners freed, and the French nobility slaughtered. The streets of Paris literally ran with blood. The French tri-colour flag was lowered and the red flag of Communism raised! Much later, the Jesuits secretly masterminded the communist takeover of Russia by the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik leaders - Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin,  etc, were merely doing Rome's bidding. Russia was to be used as a bogeyman to spread the Red ideology of communism all across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific. Communism is the Red Horseman of our text. It is just one of the truly satanic schemes hatched in the viper den of Vatican.

Through this Red peril untold millions have been slaughtered in the former Soviet Union and their satellite states in Eastern Europe. Several millions more have been slaughtered in Chairman Mao Tse Tung's Communist Revolution in China; in Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia; in Vietnam; in  Laos; in Angola; in South Africa; in Mozambique; in  Nicaragua; in El Salvador, etc. It is estimated that about 94 million people have lost their lives in the communist straitjacket. These innocents have been killed in gulags, pogroms, executions, man-made famine and starvation, forced disappearances, war, torture, incarceration, genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. The above are some of the methods that the Red Horseman has liberally employed in his rough-shod gallop across the planet.

Though the stark threat of Communism is markedly diminished with  the fall of Soviet Russia, the tumbling down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and with it the end of the Cold War, vestiges of this Red terror still remain. There is still an increasingly influential Red China on the rise and a belligerent North Korea in the Korean Peninsula. The Communist Party is also experiencing a resurgence in many places. Indeed Communism is one of the planks in the planned coming New World Order. Once again, streets will run with blood as dissenters to the New World Order are guillotined, or otherwise killed (cf Revelation 6:9-11).

May Elohim help his saints to remain firm and steadfast, even unto martyrdom if needs be, even as the Red Horseman continues to gallop across the earth.

When the Lamb opened the third seal, a third horseman appeared riding on a black horse. The horseman had a pair of balances in his hand. Then a voice from among the four living creatures said: "...a litre of wheat for a day's wages, and three litres of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine." (Revelation 6:5-6). So who is the third horseman? What do the scales in his handstand for?

The single most powerful entity in the entire Catholic system is the mysterious, shadowy, Order of the Society of Jesus. It was founded by one Inigo Lopez de Recalde (aka Ignatius of Loyola) circa 1540AD. The Jesuit order are priests, yes, but double up as a militia for the popes. They are more than mere clerics. Their leader bears a military title - Superior General. There are also Regional Generals in various parts of the world serving under him. While some Jesuits serve as regular priests, others serve the Vatican in different ways - lawyers, judges, military officers, ministers in government, lecturers in universities, policy advisers, industrialists, journalists, scientists, doctors, even house servants, company executives, etc. These are referred to as Jesuits of the short robe. There is therefore no guise they cannot assume, as long as it serves to advance their cause. 

The Jesuit Superior General is also referred to, informally,  as the "Black Pope", because he is always clad in black. In fact, the entire Order (whenever representing their Order as priests), are always garbed in black soutanes. This Black Pope is the real power in the Vatican. He is headquartered at the Church of the Gesu in Rome. He is probably the single most powerful man on the whole planet! And the Prince of Darkness guides him. Through infiltration and from behind the scenes, the Black Pope controls the powerful secret societies of the world (the Illuminati, Opus Dei, Ordo Templi Orientis, P2, Knights of Columbus, Freemasonry, the Shriners, Bohemian Grove, Golden Dawn, Bilderbergers, Skull and Bones, Holy Vehm, Club of Rome, Priory of Zion, etc). He manipulates their various agenda (with or without their knowledge) ever towards his ultimate goal - the establishment of a New World Order here on earth. In addition, the Superior General of the Jesuit Order also controls the International Banking cartels, the Mafia (and therefore the entire crime and drugs industry), and the world's top intelligence organisations. Such agencies as the CIA, MI6, Mossad, etc, are subtily controlled from Rome. 

Also, through Catholic confessionals strewn throughout earth, top-notch intelligence reports are constantly being fed to the Black Pope from all around the world. From cutting-edge research findings and technologies to the latest sophisticated weaponry, to food and agricultural production, to political plans of nations, to scientific breakthroughs, etc, he gets it all. These vast quantities of data are carefully filtered, then stored in huge underground databases, deep within the tufa bowels of the Vatican. This is their nerve centre.

Also, through crafty manoeuvrings down through the ages, the papacy has amassed astounding quantities of wealth in gold, silver, valuable artefacts, exquisite works of art (paintings, statuary, sculptures, etc), relics, lands, shadow representation in profitable blue chip companies, universities and colleges, hospitals, prime real estate, etc. According to Avro Manhattan: "...the Catholic Church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator, and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government, or state, on the whole globe. The pope as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual in the twentieth century. No one can realistically asses how much he is really worth in terms of billions of dollars..." (Vatican Billions, by Avro Manhattan). Since the real Pope is subservient to the Black Pope, we can see just how powerful the Black Pope and his organisation are. For example, the current pontiff, Pope Francis, is a Jesuit. Since we know that the Jesuit Superior General's position is held by another man - Arturo Sosa - one can clearly see who takes orders from the other! These men run the economy of the world! They are the Black Horseman of our text.

Thus, one side of the horseman's scales show the awesome power they have over the world's economy, including food production and distribution. What are they planning now? A scientific dictatorship where all food production is in the hands of a select few multi-national agro-business corporations controlled by them. These companies include: Cargill, Bayer AG, Syngenta AG, Pioneer Hi Bred International,  Monsanto, John Deere, Nestle, etc. Some produce agricultural chemicals, others seed, others machinery, others grain and other foodstuffs, etc. The current push towards global adoption of hybrids and GMOs is very deliberate. GMOs have a gene termination technology (which they call User Restriction technology), thus ensuring that seeds cannot reproduce themselves as God had intended). Furthermore through cross-pollination with natural seeds, GMOs convert the natural seeds into GMOs too, thus ensuring that they ceace reproducing themselves. Crop yields thus affected continue to drop until one has no alternative but to buy GMO seeds. Soon, the inhabitants of the earth will wake up to find that they cannot produce food to keep themselves alive! They will have to procure seed, grain and other foodstuffs from these corporations controlled by the Black Horseman!  They will have to do exactly as he dictates or literally starve to death.

The Black Horseman can also cause severe recessions, depressions, acute food shortages, or even destroy whole economies using his vast manipulative powers (just look at Venezuela, Zimbabwe, 

Greece - in recent memory - and remember Germany's Weimar Republic, the USA's Great Depression in the early part of the twentieth century).

The second side of the scales show that he administers law both nationally and in the international arena to protect the multi million dollar oil and liquor industries of the world. Through his control of the justice systems, he is also able to manipulate, control or legally destroy all his enemies and opposers. The Black Horseman is riding over the earth as we speak.

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." (Revelation 6:7-8).

The End is very close now. We see (especially here in the Horn of Africa), ever-increasing cycles of drought and famine. As a youngster, I remember we had  regular and very predictable rainy seasons. Not anymore. Now we see ever-increasing frequency of drought and failed rains. The toll on humans, and animals (both domestic and wild) is devastating. In other parts of the world the spectre of global warming is evidenced by rapidly melting glaciers, heatwaves, rampant wildfires, floods, drying lakes and rivers, inclement weather, unexplained deaths of thousands of sea mammals, fish and birds, earthquakes, tsunamis, increased volcanic activity, etc. Climate change is real. It does not bode well for us humans at all! Even in regions hitherto regarded as food secure, the spectre of hunger and famine looms.

To this, we must add the advent of plagues capable of literally shutting down the global economy (for example, the COVID-19 pandemic). At its most destructive in 2020, the Corona Virus pandemic was daily wiping off hundreds of thousands of human lives all across Europe, the USA, Latin America and Asia. Municipal authorities were actually having a hard time trying to cope with interring the piling up numbers of the dead. Hospitals were totally overwhelmed. Some countries had to hastily erect make-shift hospitals. In all, almost seven million people have died from this virulent flu. We have also had scourges of bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease, ebola, anthrax, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, etc. Then we have incessant, debilitating warfare in several parts of the world: Ukraine and Russia, Afghanistan, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Yemen, the Sahel, etc. Should we expect a respite, going forward? I hate to sound pessimistic, but honestly, I do not think so. To me, it looks like the Fourth Horseman is already galloping across the earth. These calamitous events will likely increase both in frequency as well as intensity as the other remaining seals are opened. As believers, ours is to draw ever more closer to our loving Father who is able to shield and deliver us, no matter what terrible tragedies lie ahead. Blessings.

Pastor K Chang'andu.