The Fourth Seal

The judgments increase in severity. When the fourth seal is opened, a pale horse appears, its rider is Death, and Hell follows. This is very appalling: Death and Hell, or Hades, are afterwards cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). The different colored horses and riders are clearly symbolic of a general character of things rather than of individuals. This fourth seal brings out God’s
four sore judgments
as Ezekiel calls them, over a limited portion of the earth. Ezekiel, however, speaks of them in relation to Israel:
For thus saith the Lord God, How much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast (Ezek. 14:21).
What we are to understand by the judgments of this fourth seal being limited to a
fourth part of the earth {Rev. 6:8}
I know not; but it is terrible to think what power and authority will then be given to Death and Hades, to kill
with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth {Rev. 6:8}.
It is a time of distress of nations, with perplexity, of famines and pestilences in divers places; and these are but
the beginning of sorrows {Matt. 24:8}.
Thus we see, after the saints have been caught up to meet the Lord at His coming, and are seated on thrones in heaven, as represented by the twenty-four elders, that the first four seals are opened, and we have a mighty subduing antichristian power, war, famine, and God’s
four sore judgments.
They are not extraordinary in their character, but preparatory dealings of God before the wrath of the Lamb. We may notice that in each of these four seals, one of the four living creatures is officially engaged, which is not the case in the opening of the other three.