The Lamb opens the first seal on God's scroll, and the first Horseman of the Apocalypse appears: he rides a white horse, carries a bow and wears a crown. He is sent forth to conquer.
The first Horseman is Conquest, who for some reason has been transformed by popular culture into Pestilence, the horseman who spreads disease. (In Gaiman and Pratchett's 'Good Omens', Pestilence has been replaced by Pollution, the former having quit after the discovery of antibiotics.) The original is more likely to represent imperial expansion, the subjugation of smaller nations by an evil empire - Rome.
The Lamb opens the second seal, and the second Horseman appears. He rides a red horse and carries sword. He has the power to take peace from the world, so that men shall kill one another. He is War.
John's Revelation was written shortly after the First Roman-Jewish War, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple. An extremely traumatic event for the Jews and Jewish Christians. Wars had been a regular feature of Roman life for decades; in the civil war of 68CE, four different emperors were crowned and assassinated.
With the third seal opening, the third Horseman appears. He rides a black horse and carries a pair of balances. A voice cries out, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!” Roman citizens would have recognised this as inflation, caused by food shortage: Famine. The oil and wine are unaffected, because the Horseman only targets essentials. At the time Revelation was written, inflation was escalating throughout the empire.
The fourth seal releases the fourth horseman: Death, who rides a Pale Horse. Hades, the Greek god, has a cameo appearance here: he follows Death. The duo is given the power to kill with sword, with hunger, with disease, and with the beasts of the earth.
As the fifth seal is opened, souls cry out to God for vengeance. They were killed on Earth for holding to God's testimony, and now they want their blood avenged on the earth-dwellers. They are told to wait: the time for vengeance will come.
The sixth seal opens. An earthquake. The sun blackens. The moon reddens. Stars fall. The richest men hide themselves in mountain dens, terrified that the Day of Wrath has come at last.
There is a delay before the the seventh seal can be opened. An angel descends carrying the seal of God; he must seal the foreheads of Gods servants before the end of the world can continue in earnest. The angel seals 12,000 virgin men from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and a great multitude of people from other nations, who wear white robes and praise God before his throne.
It is time to open the seventh seal...
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