AR 320, 323 - The Fourth Seal: A Pale Horse

AR 320

So I looked, and behold, a pale horse.

(Revelation 6:8)

The Word lacks vitality for people

who are without goods of life

in accordance with doctrinal truths.

For the Word in the sense of the letter

is not understood apart from doctrine,

and doctrine is not seen

without a life in accordance with it.

That is because a life in accordance

with doctrine drawn from the Word

opens the spiritual mind,

and light from heaven flows into the mind,

enlightening it and giving it the ability to see.

The reality of this is not known by one

who is acquainted with truths of doctrine,

and yet does not live according to them.

AR 323

Death symbolizes a person's self-love

because death symbolizes the extinction of spiritual life,

and thus natural life divorced from any spiritual life . . .

for this life causes a person

to love nothing but himself and the world,

and so to love also evils of every kind . . ..

 [2] . . . a sword means

the destruction of spiritual life by falsities,

. . . a famine means

the destruction of spiritual life by evils . . ..