The Four Horsemen Are Already Here – For anyone paying attention

I’m Episcopalian — and I’ll admit right up front that I probably misspelled it, which tells you everything you need to know about how devoted I am. But I do have my own relationship with God, and it doesn’t require your children to read from a Chinese-printed Trump Bible or your wife to fetch anyone a beer.

What it does require, occasionally, is paying attention to Scripture when Scripture turns out to be relevant.

And right now, it is remarkably relevant.

The Four Horsemen. The Apocalypse. The end of time as we know it. Most of us learned about them somewhere between Sunday school and a heavy metal album cover. But here’s the thing nobody in power seems to want to say out loud, we’re not waiting for the Horsemen anymore. Three of them have already shown up and made themselves comfortable.

Horse Number One — WAR.

There he is, courtesy of Mr. Peace himself. A war called any other name is still WAR. It’s just harder to see when it’s covered in black oily stuff,  and when we’re too busy paying for it at the grocery store and the gas pump to look up and notice what we’re actually funding.

Horse Number Two — FAMINE.

Famine actually arrived first, quietly, while everyone was watching something else. SNAP benefits reduced. Children’s lunch programs cut. And that’s just the children at home. The children who are now dead because DOGE eliminated USAID don’t make the evening news as often,  a few corrupt officials in the organization meant the whole thing had to go, apparently, rather than be fixed. The money had to go somewhere. It did.

Horse Number Three — DISEASE.

No vaccinations. Measles making a comeback nobody asked for. A man who sounds like he swallowed a crow now running the nation’s public health apparatus. Horse Number Three didn’t need an invitation,  we rolled out the welcome mat and handed him the keys.

Three Horsemen. Present and accounted for.

Which means there is one left.

The Pale Horse.

We are waiting for Death. History tells us it always arrives eventually when the first three have been allowed to run unchecked. The only real question, the one nobody in the gallery seems willing to answer,  is how exactly it plans to make its entrance this time.

I’m just an Episcopalian with a spelling problem and a Substack. But I can read. And what I’m reading, in the news and in the oldest book in the house, is making me very uncomfortable.

Any ideas from the gallery?