Weapons of the Pale Rider
Oct 15, 2025
We know that the type of influenza virus that devastated whole cities in the early twentieth century was H1N1, the first identified and numbered influenza virus, but we can only guess at what caused the three nineteenth century waves. Currently, there are no samples of the nineteenth-century virus available, for most of the bodies lay in hastily buried, unmarked graves. Also, influenza wasn’t always listed as the cause of death in the doctor’s notes. Sometimes, they say “laryngitis,” “pneumonia,” or even “headache.” It seems that whatever symptom screamed the loudest was recorded as the cause.
Pandemics have caused the deaths of large swaths of populations for millennia, but Scripture makes it clear that, as we near the return of Christ, these will increase in number and severity. COVID-19 is but a Braxton Hicks event.
Somewhere out there lurks an endemic virus, waiting for the perfect storm of mixing vessel, availability, access to vulnerable populations through travel, and brewing time.
Invisibility is a superpower. Ask any biological entity. For millennia, these microscopic creatures have managed to avoid detection and even recognition as a factor in disease. They’ve stealthily invaded human tissues and caused myriad maladies, reducing populations and sometimes wiping out whole cities. “Germ theory” is relatively new, commencing only in the mid-nineteenth century, but prior to Lister, Koch, and Pasteur, armies of therion marched unhindered through mankind’s history.
Rider Four’s name is Thanatos , who is one of a pair of psychopomp twins who escort the dead to the underworld. Thanatos takes the condemned unjust to hell, whilst Hypnos carries away the “just” or “justified,” those who “fall asleep.”
Hades (Hell) rides along with Thanatos, so it’s no coincidence that the Pale Rider carries a rhomphaia —a curved blade, which looks very similar to the blade carried by Kronos, who used his to castrate his father, Ouranos.
You see, Hades and Kronos are both linked with the underworld—in fact, they’re often named as rulers there.
Here’s a clue embedded within the original Greek that escaped us for years. It’s the actual meaning of the word translated “follow” (as in “Hades followed with him”). We’ve always pictured Hades as the big guy acting as the final, deadly aspect of this one-two punch. However, the Greek word, akoloutheo, implies a follower in the sense of a disciple or personal attendant. In other words, Hades is pictured as subservient to Thanatos .
This is the reverse of how most mythologies depict their relationship. According to most legends, Thanatos and his brother Hypnos serve Hades, not the other way around; yet verse 8 leads us to conclude that Hades is a bit of a “fan-boy,” or even a squire, to Thanatos!
Come on. Since when is Hades, son of the Titan king, Kronos, anyone’s servant? Is there more here than meets the eye? Possibly. After all, Thanatos is given pride of place in the list of four. He is the only rider who is named , and he is the last to arrive. The others are nothing but his warm-up acts.
So, who is Thanatos, anyway? According to Greek mythology, Thanatos was born of Nyx (“Night”) by her brother Erebus.
And Erebus is the son of the primordial dragon, Chaos.
Get that? Thanatos is the grandson of Chaos . Nice family, huh?
Erebus’s union with his sister Nyx produced Aether, Hymera, Hesperides, Hypnos, Moirai, Geras, Styx, Charon, and the twins Thanatos and Hypnos.
Here’s the kicker: “Erebus” is another name for “Tartarus.”
Did you get that?
The primordial dragon Chaos fathered Tartarus , who fathered Death .
Bottom line: The Pale Rider is way more than Clint Eastwood on an oddly colored horse. He is a very powerful rebel who is rising up out of Tartarus with Hell riding along as his disciple. When Death makes his final ride, the devastation to humanity will end the lives of one-quarter of all mankind.
We mentioned the rhomphaia carried by Thanatos (one very similar to that carried by Kronos), but Thanatos uses other weapons to end the lives of humans.
Here’s the quote:
Power was given to them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with beasts . (Revelation 6:8, KJV; emphasis added)
The Sword
Killing with a blade implies military actions or even terrorism. Recent headlines indicate a sharp rise in the number of blade-related crimes throughout the world, especially in England. Gangs of balaclava-wearing thieves on mopeds now use “zombie knives” to slash their victims’ arms or wrists in order to steal purses, messenger bags, phones, or watches. These zombie knives can be purchased online and are advertised as the only weapon that will get you through the “Zombie Apocalypse.” They also don’t require a permit, background check, or even ammunition.
Guns don’t kill people. Sin kills people.
This is an excerpt from our 2020 book Giants, Gods & Dragons . Over the coming weeks, we’ll publish it here at no charge. If you want to own a copy, it’s available in paperback, as a Kindle e-book, and as an audiobook at Amazon and Audible.
But is this “sword” in Thanatos’s hand merely a sign of chaotic crime sprees in the last days before Christ’s return? It’s one possibility, but we suspect it’s much more. Greeks believed Thanatos used the rhomphaia to harvest souls. Depictions of Death often show a skeletal figure wearing a hooded, black robe. Usually, Death carries a curved blade; sometimes shown with a long staff like the scythe, other times carrying a shorter-handled, curved blade, as in a sickle—both denote the idea of harvesting.
Hunger
This is the second manner of death employed by Thanatos and his hellish, fan-boy follower. During times of military actions, thousands, if not millions, of people lose their homes, their breadwinners, or both. This can lead to empty bellies. However, the Greek here is limos , and it means much more than missing a meal or two.
And, wait for it…
Limos is the name of the goddess of starvation.
Yep, Limos is another spirit entity, not merely a tactic. Limos is the daughter of Eris, the female aspect of chaos or discord. Homer saw Eris as the equivalent to Enyo, a war-goddess. Eris is also a daughter of Nyx, making Limos Thanatos’s niece. Nepotism in the spirit realm. Hmm…
Limos is anything but beautiful. Ovid describes Limos thusly:
Her hair was coarse, her face sallow, her eyes sunken; her lips crusted and white; her throat scaly with scurf. Her parchment skin revealed the bowels within; beneath her hollow loins jutted her withered hips; her sagging breasts seemed hardly fastened to her ribs; her stomach only a void; her joints wasted and huge, her knees like balls, her ankles grossly swollen.[i]
Virgil tells us that Limos stands at the entrance to the underworld, beside the River of Lamentation, her ugly jaws open wide to swallow the dead as they arrive. No surprise then that Limos would accompany Thanatos on his ride.
She’s been working with Uncle Thanatos all along.
Death
The third weapon is “death” (thanatos ). This seems like a redundancy. Death killing with death? There must be a reason, so let’s dig deeper.
The root word of thanatos is thnesko , which refers to spiritual death. While it’s impossible to know precisely what John and the Holy Spirit want us to deduce from this passage, it could mean several things:
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A loss of mortal life (physical death)
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A loss of spiritual life (eternal death)
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Or perhaps even a living death
What if the idea of a zombie apocalypse has merit? OK, we’ve passed into speculation land here, but bear with us for a minute. Numerous prophecies in the Bible refer to hordes of zombie-like soldiers that swarm into a city like a cloud of locusts (Joel 2, for example, but also see Isaiah 29 and Revelation 9). When the riders of Revelation start to radically alter the world, the current order will yield to Chaos; out of this, a New World Order will emerge.
We see glimpses of this shift now, such as the previously mentioned zombie knife gangs in London. Chaos, father of Erebus, who fathered Thanatos, seeks to reign once again on earth. The chaos-dragon has been clamoring to regain control of humanity and the earth since the moment the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters (Hebrew tehowm , meaning “chaos” or “Apsu,” that is, the primordial chaos-dragon, Leviathan, in Genesis 1:2).
Bottom line: Chaos is using his kids to pave the way for his return. Like a netherworld general—who’s hiding in plain sight—Leviathan sends out his troops to corrupt human souls, play upon our sinful natures, and mold us into images of himself. Thanatos and his spirit companions form the final stage of this massive strategy.
After all, invisibility is a superpower.
Beasts
Therion is the final weapon in Thanatos’ arsenal. The general translation of therion is “beasts of the earth.” While true, there’s much more to it.
First of all, it may refer to actual “beasts” or wild animals. As chaos arises across the earth (in the wake of the Four Riders’ travels), city services and infrastructure will break down, and zoos will likely empty. Starving animals will flee their enclosures (especially if cages are locked electronically), but also, research animals in the world’s thousands of laboratories could escape. Picture what might have happened in Reston, Virginia, if the Ebola-ridden monkeys housed at the animal facility there had escaped back in 1989, and then multiply that by a factor of ten thousand or more.
A second meaning to therion might refer to the virus riding in the bloodstreams of those escaped monkeys, or to an emerging disease not yet discovered. “Little beasts” is the proper translation of the Greek term, for therion is a diminutive of thera . Thera can mean “wild animals” (as in game animals, such as boars), or it can be used metaphorically, as in “preparing the destruction of men.”
“Little beasts” may also refer to microscopic “beasts,” which until the nineteenth century evaded detection with their invisibility superpowers. We think we know all about them today, but most are still poorly understood, and some are mutating into more pathogenic forms. Yet others still hide within host organisms, awaiting their chance to infect a wary hunter or tourist.
Therion is also the Greek name for a constellation, and this gets us into Redwing Saga territory again. The Redwing Saga is about spiritual warfare, focusing on the battle between the good guys (the inner circle) and the bad guys (Redwing, and later Blackstone, and finally the White Council). Redwing experiments with human and angelic partnerships, hybridizing humans with wolf “germ plasm” (we’d call it DNA).
How does Therion take us there? You see, the constellation Therion is also called Lupus—the Wolf.
The Greeks called this southern-sky constellation after their word for “little beast.” Lupus dwells in the stars with the Centaur, Hydra, and Scorpion constellations. It’s thought that the constellation Therion might be based on a Babylonian figure called “The Mad Dog,” a hybrid with the head and torso of a man, and the legs and tail of a lion.
The Mad Dog is often linked to another Babylonian figure called the “Bison-man,” an intercessor for Marduk—the chief god of Babylon.
[i] Ovid, Metamorphoses . A. D. Melville, translator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 195–197.