The four horsemen are nothing you've seen yet.

Image used with permission.

I did a search on the four horsemen of the apocalypse and came up with everything you could imagine. Blog posts for marketing companies, strange images for video games—people love to rip concepts and allegories out of the Bible but they end up cheapening the message.

In this case, the four horsemen have become a euphemism for a sign of anything negative coming your way.

How many westerns have I seen where someone quotes Revelation when the gunslinger comes to town and in low undertones, we find that death and hades just rode in? 

This would be a good time to read Revelation 6 yourself, just to see what it actually says.

A scroll is handed to Jesus, who turns out to be the only one worthy of opening it. When Jesus opens those seals, the horses ride out one by one. Those horses are judgment, and so therefore, this judgment comes at the hand of Jesus, opening the seals.

1. The White Horse (Conqueror): "He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer."

2. The Red Horse (Conflict): "And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword"

3. The Black Horse (Scarcity): "...he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine."

4. The Pale Horse (Widespread Death). "And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth."

I'm going to give you a pretty decent rule of thumb.

If a Bible prophecy teacher is promoting excessive prepping (barrels of rice and beans, bunkers, massive generators, bug out gear and cabins, gas masks, etc.), even if they are futurist and literal in their interpretation, they think Christians are going through at least part of the Tribulation.

Some try to skate around it by saying they're still pre-trib, as if these four horses don't count, as if they are not part of THE tribulation, as if maybe we should still, as believers, go through a wee bit of hell on earth and God's wrath before we get to be with our Savior.

I've seen some try to allegorize this, even people who we'd consider fairly solid futurists, when it comes to Revelation. That is, they believe it tells of what is to come, not what has already happened, and therefore, don't allegorize it when it isn't an allegory. Yet these first four seals seem to trip so many up, as if there was wiggle room to the pre-trib rapture, as if Jesus opening the first seal was different than him opening the fifth or sixth. I've heard the black horse referred to in an allegorical sense, as if talking about literal food and wages is somehow symbolic in regards to oil and wine, because in other places in the Bible oil and wine symbolize the Holy Spirit and therefore, followers of Christ. Yet they do not allegorize the other three horses.

It's inconsistent.

For those who want to argue against a pre-tribulation rapture stance, suggesting we're in the Tribulation or that we won't leave until around the fifth seal or so, there is this idea that the four horseman aren't quite so bad. 

They are pretty bad.

The deceiving soon-to-be embodiment of satan appears as the antichrist. Bloody war and the jockeying to position for war. Starvation and financial chaos and all of the unrest (and war) that comes from crop failures and empty stores and famine. And then, disease and pestilence beyond belief.

Reeking death, ushered in by deception, with about 2 billion dead bodies by the end of it. If that isn't part of the Tribulation, I don't know what to call it.

I'm not against prepping for tough times, but tell me, how will you be prepping for these four horses? Most people cannot prepare for the deception, the upheaval in world leadership, the fear and paranoia of potential war, the terror of the actual wars, and finally, legit pestilence (we're not talking 99% survival rate COVID19, here) and starvation and violence and wild animals gone crazy.

The Rapture is our blessed hope. We didn't deserve to be saved from God's wrath, but we were anyway, because of Jesus. We don't have to prove ourselves worthy or be further purified because Jesus did it all on the cross.

It. Is. Finished.