Color of the Horses from Zechariah 6:2-3

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/24/2016 11:10 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                 Focus:  Color of the Horses

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Zechariah 6:2-3

            Message of the verses:  “2 With the first chariot were red horses, with the second chariot black horses, 3 with the third chariot white horses, and with the fourth chariot strong dappled horses.”

            The color of the horses has to do with the judgment of God as we will see.  MacArthur writes “Now, you say, why always four?  Why is this four?  Well, basically, four speaks of universality.  Isaiah 11:12 talks about the four corners of the earth.  The Bible talks about the four winds of Heaven, north, easy, south and west.  And so it’s just the idea of global judgment.  Now, interestingly enough, this could be connected with the 6^th chapter of Revelation.”  Now the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation begins the tribulation period with four horsemen.  We went over this last year when we studied the book of Revelation.  These were called or sometimes called the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and if memory serves me correctly that word is the same word in the Greek as revelation.  The horses in Revelation six have similarities as the ones in Zechariah six.  MacArthur writes “For example, they appear in the same context in Revelation, that is the context of final judgment.  You have red horses in Zechariah.  The first chariot was pulled by red horses.  And in Revelation 6:4 you have red horses.  And in both cases, red horses speak of war and bloodshed.  In Revelation 6 it says, ‘And there went out another horse that was red…power was given to him who sat on it to take peace from the earth and that they should kill on another, and there was given to him a great sword.’  So the red horse of Revelation is war and bloodshed and the red horses pulling the chariot in Zechariah, again, could be paralleled with bloodshed and war.”

            Zechariah chapter six, verse two speaks of black horses pulling a chariot, and Revelation 6:5-6 “5 When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, "Come." I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.’”  This speaks of famine, so what we see here is that in the end times God will judge the world with war, with famine and this is what Zechariah speaks of too. 

            Next in verse three of Zechariah six we see white horses.  Revelation 6:2 speaks of victory, conquering, and triumph.  Now interestingly in Revelation 6:2 the rider on this horse has a bow, but no arrows as that rider will conquer without a war. 

            MacArthur concludes this section “And then you have the dappled horse or the dappled strong horse.  It’s very difficult to translate that Hebrew there but it seems best as the dappled strong horse.  You have that also called the pale horse in Revelation and there it is a reference to death and to Hell. 
And so here it is as well.  So you can see there’s a consistency in the mind of the prophets because there’s a consistency in the Holy Spirit who’s doing the revealing.  So we meet, the, four war chariots pulled by four sets of horses and the horses speak of bloodshed, and war and famine and victory and triumph and death.  And that’s going to be the way God moves in on the nations of the world.  That’s the symbols.”

            In our next SD we will begin by looking at verse four.

6/24/2016 11:36 PM