Day 144: And this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sat on them: the riders had breastplates the colour of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone. A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceeded out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads; and with them they do harm.

The statement that the four angels are released precisely at that hour, on that day, in that month and in that year, to kill a third of all the people, does not only point to the fact that the things in this world happen according to God’s plan, it could also mean that a logistical time of preparation is necessary in order to wage such tremendous warfare. The time has now arrived. The battle commences in all its demonic violence, with tanks, armoured cars, trucks and all kinds of military vehicles. John calls them horses because the horse was the pre-eminent weapon of war in his time. The first mechanically driven vehicle: the locomotive, which people called ‘the iron horse’, only came onto the scene two thousand years later. The colours of the riders’ uniforms he sees are the army’s usual colours of: copper-red, ochre-yellow and blue-black. He sees the cannons’ long barrels with their thick ends sticking out of the gun- turrets. He compares them to snakes, which have heads thicker than their bodies—a suitable image as he would not have seen cannons which were invented only over a thousand years ago. He sees fire and smoke coming from the barrels of the guns, with which grenades and other projectiles are fired, and he understands that death and destruction result from what is fired from the ‘mouths’ of the ‘serpents’. These undoubtedly include the smaller, tactical atomic, chemical and bacteriological and other projectiles of all kinds and sorts that have been developed today. Just as he did with flying armoury, he compares the warheads to lions’ heads with crowns of gold (v. 7), and this perhaps refers to the armoured turrets and the gold-coloured, frosted windows. The muzzles of the guns spit fire continually. How the grenades fired cover their trajectory cannot be seen by the naked eye, even today, but he understands that these pieces of artillery, the barrels of the guns, the tank canons, represent the deadly power of these war machines. And what is brought about by them is: a third of the people are killed by engines of war that show hellish traits. Is not the place into which those who are condemned are thrown called the fiery lake of sulphur, hell?1

• This is of course not the only explanation of these two chapters but a fair description of what looks like a world war with (inter)continental missiles, hydrogen bombs, bacteriological and chemical weapons, fighter- helicopters, fighter-bombers, tanks, ground troops etc. It is a possibility and more conceivable that an army of demons who kill people. And such a kind of warfare is truly demonic in nature.

Bible References:
1.Revelation 19:20, 20:10, 14–15, 21:8