John’s readers would have known that the Euphrates was traditionally the place of Israel’s enemies. Though John was not prophesying the future conquest of Rome by the Parthians, he was nevertheless taking the political anxieties of the Roman world and using them to help us visualize a scene of horror. The image of an infinite wave of demonic hordes invading westward from the Euphrates River would have undoubtedly stirred up the deep-seated Roman fears of a potential Parthian invasion. I suspect they are a demonic army, headed by these four fallen angels against a defiant, unrepentant world. They can attack from the front and the back. Fire, smoke, and brimstone pour out of their mouths and their tails are like biting serpents. The deadly power of these horses is in their mouths, and tails, not in their legs. And to point to some nation such as China that claims to have 200 million soldiers, is to miss the message John is trying to convey. The description doesn’t describe war horses or advanced modern tanks. Is this a literal army of 200 million beings? Note the emphasis is made not on the riders, but the horses. Each is charged with leading part of a vast army to be released at a precise time, with a special purpose: to kill, not just torment, a third of the world’s population. We might even say they are angels of mass destruction. It was at the golden altar of incense that an angel offered the prayers of the saints now from this same altar a voice commands four angels be set free.
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