According to Saint John, the end of the world will be heralded by four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The Apocalypse mentions only the fourth horseman by name – Death and his companion Abyss. There are indications that the first horseman is the Antichrist, as the horsemen brought unimaginable disasters to the Earth. All the horsemen, except Death, are depicted in human form.
In John’s revelation, the first horseman rides a white horse, carries a bow, and receives a crown to symbolize conquest, perhaps invoking the plague or the Antichrist. The second carries a sword and rides a red horse as the creator of civil war, conflict, and unrest. The third, a food merchant, rides a black horse symbolizing famine, and carries scales. The fourth and last horse is pale, and Death rides it, accompanied by Abyss – Hades.
… “I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer”.
Revelation 6:1–2, New American Standard Bible
… “And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from Earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him”.
Revelation 6:3–4, New American Standard Bible
… “I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the Earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the Earth”.
— Revelation 6:7–8, New American Standard Bible
The Apocalypse of St. John was written almost 2,000 years ago (probably 89 AD); and there are some, who think that its prophecy is being fulfilled now.
When you look around the horizon of the modern world, you can easily identify the riders of the approaching Apocalypse.
Let’s look: the rider of the modern Apocalypse is undoubtedly Vladimir Putin, a psychopathic mass murderer who does not hesitate before any crime, any provocation. Russia, a country whose founding doctrine mentions greatness through expansion, has already conquered a vast area of Europe and more than half of Asia by manu militari. Its influence reaches all other continents. The aggression against Ukraine, whose security it guaranteed under the Budapest Agreement, has most clearly demonstrated its goals and its methods.
The increasingly frequent allusions by Putin and other Russian leaders to plans for Russia to use nuclear weapons, also in response to an alleged attack with conventional weapons, his delirious speeches about “Russia’s civilizing mission,” unbridled expansionism, enslaving successive states and nations with weapons or economic blackmail: does all this not qualify Putin as the herald of the Apocalypse?
Another harbinger of the Holocaust is Kim Jong-un; he would be a funny, operetta dictator of a small country (although not for his own citizens) if he did not have a huge arsenal dominated by atomic bombs and countless long- and medium-range missiles. He is pathologically aggressive, in speech and – recently – in action; after all, he has sent a large contingent of soldiers to Russia, to the front line of the fight against Ukraine, as well as huge quantities of weapons (including howitzers) and ammunition; at least one and a half million pieces of large, destructive “Kaliber” missiles. All of this will fall on Ukrainian soil.
But this is only a small fraction of his arsenal: he reserves the largest part of it for regional wars, primarily with their brothers from the free part of the Korean state, with Japan and with the USA, mainly with American military bases in the Far East and the Pacific, but also with the west coast of the USA – Kim’s missiles are capable of hitting cities there, from Seattle to San Diego. Looking at what he does to his own citizens, we can be sure that if Kim decided to start aggression against other countries, he would stop at nothing.
Who knows, maybe the most dangerous rider of the modern Apocalypse is not the dictator of communist China Xi Jinping.
Until recently, the prevailing view was that even Chinese communists would not violate the holy commandment of Confucius, condemning expansionist wars other than defensive ones. This view, widely taught at universities, was not entirely true, because the Chinese communists had already taken over Tibet – once one of the largest countries in the world – 2.5 million square kilometers. And East Turkestan (today’s Xinjiang Chinese province) – 1.7 million square kilometers, or, if you prefer, more than a third of the present-day area of the People’s Republic of China (9.6 million square kilometers ca.).
Of course, the issue of annexing Taiwan and eliminating there the democracy, which Beijing hates, has always been present in the doctrine of the People’s Republic of China, but under the rule of the latest dictator Xi Jinping, preparations for the invasion of Taiwan have taken on a completely new dimension.
But it is not just about Taiwan.
China has begun to pursue a very aggressive policy in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, making several territorial claims, which it does not intend to abandon despite unfavorable rulings of the UN Arbitration Court. It has built several artificial islands in the South China Sea, and on them, heavily manned military bases. China is in a border dispute with many countries in the region. It occupies part of the internationally recognized territory of India, they make territorial claims (the rocky pinnacles protruding from the waters of the South China Sea) to Japan; they have disputes over territorial waters with the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and even Indonesia.
In addition, for two decades, they have been pursuing an aggressive neocolonial policy in Africa and are increasingly boldly reaching out to South America. They are also one of the initiators of the “Global South Alliance”, which, in their intention, is to be an alternative to Western civilization.
They have a huge, constantly developed, and increased nuclear arsenal, they are quickly making up for the delays in the Navy and military aviation.
It is debatable whether the fourth horseman of the modern Apocalypse is capable of starting a world war. I am talking about Ali Khamenei, the religious and political leader of Iran. Iran is responsible for starting many local wars, and its regional expansionism seems unbridled. Iran has almost complete control over Iraq, has a huge negative influence in Lebanon through Hezbollah, has taken over large parts of Syria, which has become a joint Iranian-Russian condominium, controls most of Yemen through the Zaidis – a religious branch of Shiism – and their Houthi militias. It has tried to take control of Shiite Bahrain and would have succeeded if not for Saudi military intervention. Arabia itself has three turbulent eastern provinces inhabited by the Shiite minority, where Iran has repeatedly tried to provoke bloody revolts, muddied the waters in Pakistani Baluchistan, which is inhabited mostly by Shiites, and gained influence in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan… It is certainly one of the most aggressive countries in the world, and history teaches us that regional conflicts can easily escalate into global ones, especially when they take place in a region as crucial from an energy perspective as the Middle East.
For many years, the most explosive point in the world was considered to be the India-Pakistan border, especially the province of Jammu and Kashmir, which is inhabited mostly by Muslims and was forcibly separated from India by Pakistan. Both countries are nuclear powers, and both are extremely populous – India has already overtaken China with almost 1.5 billion people, and Pakistan will reach a quarter of a billion in the next year or two. Both countries are ethnically, linguistically, and even culturally complex, so a war between them, in addition to being devastating, could trigger a series of minor conflicts on the Indian subcontinent, from which, after long and bloody wars, completely new subjects of international law could emerge.
Recently, the United States, the guardian of the post-war world order, an order that is now ending, has also joined the ranks of heralds of the Apocalypse. The election of the unpredictable Donald Trump as president has incredible destructive potential. The customs barriers he has announced will certainly trigger tariff wars that could threaten the world economy. Mass deportations – the main theme of his election campaign – could seriously undermine the economy of the United States itself. His privileged, never fully explained relations with Vladimir Putin, as well as his primitive approach to international politics, could easily lead to the military and political collapse of Ukraine, the full consequences of which we in Europe cannot yet fully imagine. If it follows through on its threats to withdraw the US from NATO, it will radically reshape the global balance of power, decidedly to the benefit of China and the detriment of Europe and the broadly understood West. The apocalypse may therefore come from Washington.
There is another apocalypse that threatens us: the possible collapse of the European Union. From the beginning of its existence, it has been the target of hybrid wars by Russia, China, and other countries from the “axis of evil”. These wars are very effective in fuelling the activity of extremist, anti-EU forces, which are already widely present in the European Parliament. Far-right groups, traditionally hostile to the European Union, are coming to power in successive European countries. The presence in the Union of Hungary, Slovakia, and until recently Poland, the general crisis of leadership in European countries, as well as the clear economic slowdown of Germany, the main contributor to the EU coffers, make the prospect of the collapse of the Union increasingly likely. And separately, all European countries will become easy targets for powerful authoritarian forces that are conquering ever larger areas of the world.
So, what is left for Europe and the West as a whole? To passively observe the inevitably approaching Apocalypses? Or rather to make another great creative effort that will restore its position as the dominant economic power in the world, a military power with a huge deterrent potential?
Of course, the latter. But, for the time being, the societies of the Western world, especially those in Europe and North America, seem to be wandering not so much in the fog, which is in the thick goo of egoism, hedonism, and endless mental laziness.
Jacek Pałasiński