Revelation 6:8 is a prophetic verse of the Bible that shows us what will happen in the future. The setting is in the Great Tribulation, which lasts for 3.5 years, and precedes the return of Jesus Christ.
It reads: "So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth."
The rider of this horse is called Death. Death is a figure in mythology pictured as a skeletal man wearing a black hooded robe, the original "hoodie", carrying a scythe; he comes for people whose turn it is to die and takes them away. The reality is that Death is an enemy (see 1 Corinthians 15:26) rather than a figure of fun or fiction.
But the Bible might also use the word death to picture other people.
I noticed this in the book of Habakkuk, a minor prophet in the Old Testament.
"I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected. Then the LORD answered me and said: 'Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith. Indeed, because he transgresses by wine, he is a proud man, and he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his desire as hell, and he is like death, and cannot be satisfied, he gathers to himself all nations and heaps up for himself all peoples.' " (Habakkuk 2:1-5).
Here God is comparing a proud man to death. This proud man gathers all nations and peoples to himself, like a great dictator or world ruler.
He says it is a vision, i.e. something yet to happen. I compared this to Revelation 6:8 and saw Death being mentioned in both these scriptural passages, as well as Hell. In Revelation 6:8 the word "Hades" is Greek for hell, but this is not a place of eternal torment for sinners, but refers to the grave (hell is an old Saxon word for hole in the ground).
Note also that the proud man does not stay at home.
This could well be a prophecy of something that is going to come to pass soon, I do not know for sure. It could be that a man who is proud, well-known, and power-hungry, will come on the world scene as a man who wants to gather lots of people to himself, such as building large armies that are from many nations, to go to war and kill 25% of their enemy, or even 25% of mankind, although the reference in Revelation 6:8 to killing "one fourth" (i.e. one quarter, 25%) is of mankind as a whole, to happen in the Great Tribulation at the end time. And note this proud man does not stay at home, i.e. not doing these things in his home country, but going abroad or around the world to do it.
So could there be someone today who fits this description?
Habakkuk 2 started with "I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart"; elsewhere the Bible tells us to watch and keep an eye on things that are happening in this world.
The best we can do is to keep reading the written Word of God, keep in mind the things God says, and watch the world scene and see what fits with what, as well as being just and to "live by his faith", i.e. put your faith in God and His Word and trust in Him. One day Jesus Christ the Messiah will return to this Earth to put an end to humanity's abuse and misrule of the planet, to bound Satan so that he can no longer deceive the nations and set up the wonderful Kingdom of God on Earth, which will bring true peace and justice to us all.
All Bible quotes taken from the New King James Version, Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
