More On The Four

A study of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse reveals the wide variety of interpretations of The Four Horsemen of the Revelation  (Greek = apocalypse) and applications. A prime example is Albrecht Dürer's portrayal. 

Albrecht Dürer's Four Horsemen
1498

The British Museum points out that Albrecht Dürer's 1498 publication of the text of the Book of Revelation secured for him an income for the rest of his life. 

Skilled block cutters cut around his drawn lines to portray pestilence, war, famine and death driving citizens and king alike into the jaws of hell. 

The illustrated Martin Luther Bible has similar images of the Four Horsemen. Cunningham and Grell studied their meaning for Luther (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe). For Luther and for many supporting the reformation, they write, the white horse and its rider point to the Second Coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment when the godly will be saved and the ungodly punished. The arrows represent God's wrath and punishment and the bow is a symbol of God's covenant with His elected people. This interpretation was also facilitated by Dürer's woodcut. Dürer was an early follower of Luther. And he was not unique among the early evangelicals who saw Luther as an apocalyptic prophet who preached the Gospel and announced the commencement of the final period of world history. 

Christopher Cameron Smith, an aspiring scholar of Islamic studies,  in a blog about Martin Luther on the Turks (and Islam), based upon a paper written for a course on Luther and the Reformation, points out that many Protestants fled to Ottoman lands when their "Christian" rulers oppressed them. This, he says, is precisely why you cannot understand the Reformation without seeing what role 16th century Ottoman expansion played in European thought.  

Regardless of where you come down in your interpretation of the Four Horsemen, it is clear that we are in the final period of world history.